


The Carver's Legacy

by RZZMG



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, Cannibalism, Dark, Death, Drama, Explicit Language, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied Skinning, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Romance, Sad Ending, Sibling Incest, Sibling Rivalry, War, dark!fic, head canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-13
Updated: 2018-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-31 04:26:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,229
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10891668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RZZMG/pseuds/RZZMG
Summary: A monster. A cannibal. A visionary. A death god... The Bone Carver has been called many things in his wicked immortal life. He has been worshiped by thousands, but has loved only twice. And now the end is coming, he has foreseen his own death, and with the time he has left, he struggles with leaving behind a legacy that will make up for all his past evil and for his very human-like failures.CANON COMPLIANT UP TO THE END OF "A COURT OF WINGS AND RUIN"





	1. Tempus Tempest

**Author's Note:**

> This plot bunny came to me after reading "A Court of Wings and Ruin", specifically this paragraph: _"Clever that Fae warrior. Her bloodline is long gone now - though a trace still runs though some human line." He smiled perhaps a bit sadly. "No one remembers her name. But I do. She would have been my salvation, had I not made my choice long before she walked this earth."_
> 
> That made me realise that the Bone Carver had once been in love with a Fae female who was not only a tough warrior and a sly magic user (she was the one who tricked his sister, the Weaver and his brother, binding them both and ending their reigns as 'gods' to be worshipped), but she obviously didn't stay with him and instead married/mated someone else - someone human. Well, of course, that inspired my muse to go mad.
> 
> And then there's Az. Poor, sweet Az with his unrequited love that will never be realised because of Morrigan's sexual preference for women...and the interesting little spell that makes the Bone Carver look just like her. And how in "A Court of Mist and Fury", Az quickly volunteers to go see the Bone Carver in Feyre's stead that first time and even intimates he's been there alone several times in the past ("I'll go. The Prison sentries know me-what I am."). Hmmm....
> 
> Author's Notes: Excerpts from "The Carver's Legacy" take place, obviously, after the war with Hybern ("A Court of Wings and Ruin"). The actual story starts soon after Feyre first meets the Bone Carver in "A Court of Mist and Fury" and is told from the Bone Carver's POV exclusively until the Epilogue.
> 
> This fic is multi-chaptered and contains explicit sexual and violent content. NOTE THE WARNINGS BEFORE READING!
> 
> FYI: I use British spellings for this story.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tempus - Noun - Latin for "time".  
> Tempest - Noun - A violent, windy storm.
> 
> A play on words.

****

 

.

**~.~.~.~.~**

**_“Survival inspires savagery.”_ **

**_~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Jurian The Repentant_ ** ****

**~.~.~.~.~**

 

Time is different here, in Prythian.

It’s slower, and more…ordered. Counted in the regular movements of the sun and the moon.

Across the void, in the world where I and my two siblings were Made, there were no seasons, only patterns of weather that changed from one moment to the next like eddying tides. We counted our lives in between the moments of searing heat, freezing rain, and air so cold it sometimes froze a creature in place in a matter of heartbeats.

_“She was born three rains ago.”_

_“He died at the start of the great sun’s reign.”_

_“I last ate during the snow fall.”_

We had no concept of weeks, months, or years, no way to gauge such things, except as we grew and aged, and felt the urge to mate.

There were also great sandstorms that struck those rocky hills and barren valleys, too. They occasionally blew so hard, skin was flayed from bone.

It was these gales that my tribe anticipated with a combination of dread and excitement, for those cyclones of suffocating heat and dirt that tore through the high deserts of our lands and sent us scurrying into rough underground burrows for countless hours until they passed were both reapers and sowers.

While we hid away in caverns of complete darkness and prayed to our gods, the young would tend to the crops of moss in the subterranean caves below. Levels above them, the adults would enter into a religious frenzy as the mating cycle began with the arrival of the twisting demons of earth. Females were used hard by every male of the tribe until they were bred.

At the same time, the aged and infirm, those gutted by life, were left above ground during the sand tempests, chained to stone walls outside the entrances. They screamed defiance at the murderous winds, even as it stole their breaths from them. Their deaths sustained the rest of us.

I will never forget the way their clean, white bones had cracked open in my hands or the sweet flavour of their marrow passing my tongue and filling my belly.

 

* * *

 

~.~.~.~.~

**_“The first time we’d met, I’d known he was a different sort of monster.”_ **

**_~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Feyre Archeron, High Lady of Night_ **

~.~.~.~.~

 

I carved carefully, slowly into the calf-bone, my talent fashioning a face from the osseous material.

The Middengard Wyrm’s soul had been snuffed out by the sharper end. I could still taste the residual magic of that death on my tongue. Its marrow had been meatier than what I’d become accustomed to over the last several centuries, and I savoured it between my teeth.

“Your persistence could almost be called admirable, if it wasn’t for the fact your High Lord was specific that you drop the idea,” I informed my guest. He’d visited me often enough over the centuries that our level of familiarity allowed for some good-natured taunting. “Are you sure you wish to risk Rhysand's wrath?”

The shadowsinger stepped forward and threw a bag at me. It rattled as it hit the smooth, worn floor of my cell.

“From Andras,” he offered me. “The Spring Court sentinel who sacrificed himself to help bring about the end of Amarantha’s curse.”

I gently placed the calf-bone down and crawled to the bag. It was filled with a variety of bones, but there was no skull inside, much to my disappointment. Still, it was a fine cache. Dying for a noble cause was almost as sweet a magick as dying for love. They were, in fact, closely related…as were the flavours.

These I would devour, as my own strength was waning of late. I’d starved myself for too long this time.

“Two questions,” I negotiated. “Ask.”

Azriel glowered down at me from his greater height. “Three. One extra for the face you’re wearing.”

I glanced up at him, knowing who he was looking at, seeing into the heart of his pain as he looked down into rich, brown eyes and long, golden hair that sparkled like sunlight, into the face of the Morrigan he loved.

“This wasn’t my choice. You know how it works.”

The visitor’s heart chose my shape for us both. It was my curse that I be ‘unknown’: never to speak my real name aloud again, never to show my real face to any other. I had lied to the woman _I’d_ loved once upon a time—about who I was, _what_ I was—and so this was my punishment.

The big Illyrian nodded, but was resolved. “Three questions.”

I sighed in defeat. I never could deny any of the Night Court what they needed, and not due to any spell upon me.

“Ask, and be quick about it.” My stomach was rumbling. I needed to eat.

“Where is the Book of Breathings within the human realm?”

A wasted question, for this I could not see. “Hidden from my sight. I do not know.”

Azriel seemed frustrated by that answer, but it was the most honest I’d ever been, aside from when Feyre Cursebreaker had come to visit earlier.

“Will she accept the mate bond with him?” he asked me for his second question.

Ah, he was worried for his High Lord’s sanity. How noble. "Yes, but it will not be easy for Rhysand. He will have to bare his soul to that female first, if he dares.” I reached into the bag of bones and caressed a rib. Well shaped, but too brittle to consume… “If you worry of her residual feelings for the Lord of Spring, do not. Feyre Cursebreaker and Rhysand are a true love match.”

That seemed to relieve the soldier of the scarred hands.

He was still tense, however.

“No,” I told him, before he could ask, because I knew what he wished me to tell him. “I do not know if your heart’s greatest desire for a night spent in the Morrigan's bed will come true after Hybern is finished."

Before then, however...there was something indistinct, blurry about that possibility. Shadows of her, but _not_ _her_ in his arms played at the edges of my vision. It made little sense to me, and so I could not divulge it as any sort of fact or truth.

"As I have told you before, Secret Keeper, I cannot see beyond the boundaries of my own death.”

The shadows seemed to grow longer around my guest. “So you will die in the coming war?” Azriel sounded saddened by that fact.

I pursed my lips into a disappointed, tight frown, letting him know without words that he was crossing the wrong line. I’d long ago resolved myself to what awaited me at the turning of the New Age. Dwelling upon it would not change that fate, and I did not like to think what awaited me in the hereafter, if there was such a thing. I'd done enough evil in this life to merit an unnaturally unpleasant afterlife, I was quite sure.

He pushed me on the subject, however, even knowing he was risking my wrath. “Is that why you asked Feyre about her experiences after Amarantha had killed her?” 

Anxiety tightened a fist around my blackened heart. “Is that your third question?”

“No, I'm simply curious.”

“Then be done with this interrogation, Master of Secrets,” I snapped at him. “I grow…weary of your presence.”

He stiffened, and I was instantly sorry for my words, especially knowing they’d seemed to come from the mouth of the woman he’d adored, but I made no indication that I cared. It wouldn’t do to allow this warrior to feel he could be so friendly with me, despite our numerous encounters…or the fact I knew he was lonely for someone to understand the side of him that was more monster than male and could relate.

-Despite the fact I was the father of his race, and he was one of my favourite descendants.

I was, however, an eater of life—quite literally. That role did not allow me to become attached to others, for fear of killing them, and I’d had enough of doing that, both accidentally and purposefully. For that reason, I kept my expression blank, my true self tucked away behind the icy mask of the Bone Carver. “Ask,” I hissed at him, desperate to send him away so I could feast on Andras the Brave, so I could fill this gnawing, hateful sensation in my centre that continually returned, despite all my efforts to appease its nature.

Azriel was quiet and still, as only one who’d experienced real horror could become. When he finally spoke, it was to inquire of me the one question I’d always feared someone would eventually be brave enough to dare.

“Are you afraid to die?”

The bones in the bag rattled, and I realised it was because my hands shook.

Was I afraid?

I knew the when, even the where and the why. I knew it would not be pleasant, but it would be fast. I knew I would die doing the right thing...

But I would be hungry even with my last breath.

“Yes,” I said so softly I wasn’t sure he’d heard me. It didn’t matter, because I’d turned inward, to memories long past, to a life wasted by fear and need unsatisfied. I was lost in regrets that were darker than the mountain around me. “I’m afraid, because I don’t know if this curse will end with my life, or truly follow me into eternity.” I put my hand over my growling stomach to quiet it down. "I fear even death will not be able to give me the peace I crave."

It was quiet in my cell after that. So quiet, I only realised Azriel was gone and how much time had passed once the torch he'd left sputtered out at long last. Not even the air currents carried his scent any longer, and I could hear my fellow inmates rousing in their cells once more now that we were all alone in The Prison. Scratching, hissing, whispering...

With a wave at them and an expulsion of my will, the bone doors to my cell boomed shut, their echo reverberating through my self-imposed prison, sealing me in once more. 

I lost track of time then, sitting on the floor in the dark. I counted those moments as I usually did: by prisoner episodes. When one barked a maniacal laugh, I stood up. When another shouted a demand to be set free at once, I moved to the wall. When a door above cracked open, I opened the bag of Andras' bones. And when one of the prisoners killed and devoured another, rending its flesh limb from limb, I feasted on my cache.

Time is different here in Prythian.

You count it in screams.

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please review! Reviews make the world go 'round! :)


	2. Brittle Bones

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This head canon event takes place in “A Court of Mist and Fury”, at the end of Chapter 31, but just before Chapter 32, in the days Azriel is out of Feyre’s sight working on breaking into the human queens’ courts.

**~.~.~.~.~**

_**"When you are Made, you become 'other', but that condition does not imply a lack of feeling.** _

_**Quite the opposite, in fact."** _

**_~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Amren_ **

**~.~.~.~.~**

 

My doors were flung open without fanfare, but I knew who had come to visit me even before he’d taken a step into my lair.

I smelled his fighting leathers first, then heard the creak of his wings as he folded them in and tucked them tight to prevent potential damage to them. The shadows scouted ahead for him next, and the wind followed after, whispering in his ear a trove of lesser secrets. Yet, despite all his magick and talent, there were greater secrets he was not privy to nor could he understand, hence the reason for his visits.

I felt my body shift into the familiar shape of the Morrigan and clucked my tongue at the strangeness of taking on a female's form once more.

“Hello, Spymaster,” I greeted Azriel as he stepped forward into my domain, torch in hand. His beautiful face was as icy and tightly controlled as ever, but his eyes were haunted. They betrayed him to me. “Why so angry today? Is it because you can’t find a way into the queens' courts past the barrier they’ve each erected?”

I knew he’d been trying. The wind and shadows spoke to me as well, and I’d felt that magical warding go up. Its power had been immense. Someone was protecting them, but whoever it was remained hidden from my inner sight behind the same sort of mystical veil that hid the human's half of the Book of Breathings.

Azriel paused, searching and reclaiming the eternal calm that he’d practiced well during those long years he’d been chained in darkness. “You’re a wind-talker, too, aren’t you?” he asked.

I gave him a bland smile. “Have you brought me a gift today?”

He sighed at my deflection and reached into a hip satchel, withdrawing a long, white bone for me. Tossing it to my feet, he said, “My half-brother’s Tibia. His dominant leg.”

I picked it up and immediately felt the power of Azriel’s cold hatred running through it. I brought it to my nose and inhaled. It had been taken centuries ago, but the marrow within was still fresh. It made my mouth water.

It also conveyed to me why it had been so important to my visitor.

“He hurt you when you were a child.”

Azriel went preternaturally still, and the shadows seemed to pull in, gather tightly to him until he wore them as an inky cloak of dark protection.

“Beat you, cut you, burned you.”

My gaze moved to those scarred hands that I knew, in my mind’s eye, had been lovely before being ruined.

A vision suddenly came to me through the bone and it caused me to jerk back from its smooth surface. His half-brother was holding him down with other males, gripping his small, white hips, laughing and jeering while they took turns behind him…

I dropped the bone and snarled at it.

_Too close, too real!_

That murky sensation of drowning in memory—mine—threatened to pull me under once more, reminding me of why I’d stayed hidden all this time. Reminding me of _who_ I had been hiding from down here in the deep caverns of the world, and why I needed to remain here.

_Koschei and Stryga._

_Sadists. Blood drinkers. Rapists..._

Had my ‘guest’ not spoken then, I think I might have fallen into one of my usual catatonic states or a fugue. Memories of the past sometimes dragged me into dark places with them and locked me down tight until I shook them off. I'd once lost an entire century thus.

“Rhysand broke his legs. I tore this one off,” he said with a feral showing of teeth.

“Good,” I managed to say, and dragged my eyes from the bone, from its horrible visions, forcing them to meet the Night Court’s master assassin. He seemed a bit astonished at the ferocity of my reply. “Did he beg you for mercy?”

“Yes.”

Obviously, he hadn’t granted it.

I knew the smile I gave him then was feline and predatory.

He’d offered up to me a piece of his soul, so I would grant him what I knew in exchange for such bravery. “Ask me.” I held up three fingers so he would know his question limit.

A simple nod from that dark head confirmed acceptance of my terms.

“How can I get into the mortal queen’s courts?”

I used my foot to kick at the bone on the ground, rolling it with my toes against the earth to nullify the residual memory it carried. The stone would disperse its energy, so I could touch it again without being overwhelmed by the painful emotions attached to it. “They’ve warded their castles against magick. Just don’t use any,” I replied, offhand.

Azriel frowned, seeming to consider that. “You’re saying I should use humans to spy for me. But how can I control them without magick?”

I let my eyes linger over at him, tracing that classically elegant Fae profile, admiring both the fragile beauty of it and the quiet, masculine pride. Seeing the many secrets lying under that smooth, sun-kissed skin… “Break their minds. Own them,” I instructed. “Then send them in to do your bidding.”

Again, the Illyrian’s spine stiffened and the shadows thickened around him. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I scoffed. “Lie to everyone out there,” I told him, pointing towards the door behind him. “Even lie to yourself on occasion, if you need to. But don’t _ever_ lie to me, Shadowsinger. I taste your power in my mouth. I know your true heart.” I waved a hand down the body of the magnificent female whose face and form I currently mimicked. “And I know a _daemati_ when I feel one.”

The hand holding the torch shook just once, but I saw it. He knew I saw it.

He knew he’d finally been found out.

“What do you want?” he asked in a soft whisper. “For your silence.”

“Is that your second question?”

He seemed to struggle between using up one of his chances to find out more about the queens versus discovering a way to keep me from spilling his confidences to anyone who might come asking me about him.

He opened his mouth to answer, but I quickly held up a hand to stop him.

“I’ll make you a deal instead.”

“No.”

He took a step backwards, as if he was considering leaving. I thought about what I was willing to risk to push him too far. I’d come to enjoy our occasional talks over the centuries, to be honest, and would miss them if he were to go and never return.

I thought about the end coming soon as well, and what I would need to do to prepare for it…

“What I ask for in return for my silence should be no difficult task for you: I need bare bones, cleaned. A lot of them. Preferably those that have meaning to you, but I’ll take any you can bring me. Any shape, any size, any species. Skulls, too, if you can acquire them. I need them immediately.”

My request seemed to surprise him.

“Why?” he asked, clearly curious.

I _tsked_ at him. “That’s another question, Azriel, and you haven’t even made the first deal yet.”

He blinked at the use of his first name. I rarely used it when we talked, preferring to keep a distance between us. Things were changing, though, and too fast for me to keep up the act. The clock was ticking down on my life, and truthfully, I was tired of my self-imposed prisons.

“Take my offer,” I encouraged him, “and I will keep your secrets and answer all your questions today about how you might best go about breaking into the queens’ courts—including how to determine the right humans to make your spies.”

The spymaster's suspicions of me ran deep, but his need to get this information was time critical, and we both knew it. Besides, what I was asking of him was an easy enough request to fulfill.

I waited him out, but in the end, he agreed as I’d predicted.

We spent the next few hours talking in low voices. That leg bone on the stone floor lay as an unspoken demarcation line between us in the room, but as our discussion progressed, we each moved closer to it. By the time I’d exhausted his questions, we stood only a foot or so apart.

I wondered as I glanced up at his greater height if the face I wore and the lovely voice that came from it had something to do with the trust he'd unwittingly shown me.

When he left at long last, I shut the doors behind him and turned to the bone of the male who had hurt the shadowsinger as a small child. When I cracked it open between my hands and sucked the marrow from it, I enjoyed every bite of its buttery-meaty texture, savouring the taste of Azriel’s revenge. 

Then, I gnawed the bone down, grinding it into grit between my teeth.

 

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**


	3. Witness of Warnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter’s head canon story takes place between Chapters 37 & 38 of “A Court of Mist and Fury”. Amren now has the Fae Book of Breathings (stolen from Tarquin of the Summer Court), and Tarquin sent Blood Rubies to the Court of Nightmares to let them know he’d put a contract on their heads for that theft. Rhys tells us Azriel was the one who picked up the box with the rubies and delivered it to him very early the morning after everyone returned to Valeris with the stolen Book. Azriel then took off again, and it’s not stated where he went.
> 
> For the sake of this fic, I’m saying he went to The Prison to talk to the Bone Carver on Rhys’ behalf.
> 
> In the novel, Az returned later that morning to Valeris from his mystery location, and he and Rhys immediately went into a hush-hush discussion. Feyre left them alone, so we don’t know what they talked about in that meeting.
> 
> Also, there’s an allusion here to Amren’s real essence, as revealed in “The Court of Wings and Ruin” – she was one of the Jewish god’s angelic host who struck down Sodom and Gomorrah, as told in the Torah.

 .

**~.~.~.~.~**

**_"When he winnowed into the front lines of the army, and I got a look at the body and face he was wearing, I was angry. I thought the form he'd taken-that of an Illyrian soldier-was a final 'fuck you' for forcing him to fight for our side. It was only later, after everything was over, that I understood the truth: our Maker had come to stand between us and our enemies, to give his life for ours...as any good father would do for his children."_ **

_**~ from "The Carver's Legacy", excerpt by Cassian** _

**~.~.~.~.~**

.

 

Far above my head, the gates into The Prison opened, and the earth rumbled as the ancient mountain was disturbed once more.

A cool breeze blew past our unexpected visitor, rushing down the long corridors ahead of him, announcing his identity to all the prisoners. It seemed the Wraith was out of his cage again, running free and causing mischief.

…And the Night Court’s shadowsinger had returned.

Stiff from sitting for so long, I climbed to my feet and stretched, knowing from the sounds of Azriel’s quick, uninterrupted stride that he was heading straight for me once more, and with some urgency. He’d be here any second.

It seemed he needed me again.

My mouth went dry and I clenched my fists with anticipation.

My reaction wasn’t for him, though. I was hungry. He was bringing me bags filled with bones, as promised. I would eat again and be able to quiet this gnarling need within me for a little while. That’s all this was. That’s why…

 _“Liar,”_ the shadows whispered in my ears, making my heart pound with their wicked suggestions.

I silenced them with a warning hiss.

They went quiet, knowing to obey by now.

I felt him when he was but a few steps away, and my will, my magick opened the doors for him.

A moment after that, I stood in the Morrigan’s skin once more. Familiar, hot resentment flared through me as I shifted. I’d voluntarily surrendered my contact with the world above more than twenty millennia ago, but the curse…it further removed me from everyone else. I was now and forevermore _‘other’_ in every sense of the word. Because of _her._

Night’s spymaster stepped into the open doorway.

As if the cache was calling out to me, my attention was instantly drawn to a satchel made of smooth goat hide that sat on his muscular hip. Within it, I could smell the bones he’d brought to fulfill our prior agreement. They rattled around in that tight, dark space, seeking release and rest.

He’d brought me quite the feast.

I needed to remember to save half of them for carving…

It was almost an afterthought when I noticed he’d come no closer, as reticent as a first-timer to my lair. He smelled of discomfort, of awkwardness and agitation rolled together. Perhaps he’d realised in retrospect how compromised he’d been by the face I’d worn in his presence last visit. He _had_ stood mere inches away from a Death Knight with no guards or wards to separate us—a fatal mistake had I been one of my siblings.

“You’re afraid.”

 _‘Of me,’_ went unspoken, but understood.

Azriel blinked, trying to locate me in the dark, but his expression remained blank, icy calm. He’d taught himself well how to hide his feelings, after all.

“I’d be a fool not to be,” he admitted.

“But I am the prisoner here,” I reminded him, moving around the outer edge of the room. I purposefully stayed out of his light, drifting through the darkness. “And you, my gaoler.”

He attempted to track me with his shadows, but mine were older, eldritch things that, for all his immense power, he had no ability to subdue or coerce. I had willed them to serve me ages ago, when his race was young and Prythian was still a dream unrealised. I commanded them now to shut him out.

“I think you would like the rest of us to believe that,” he replied, oh-so-carefully. “But it is clear to me who the High Lord under this mountain truly is.”

I chuckled.

What lovely flattery from such a pretty mouth!

“Did you know I was once called such?” I told him, feeling generous with my secrets today.

“High Lord?” His eyebrows rose with surprise and curiosity. “Of which Court?”

“None that exists in the world today,” I told him, and bade my shadows direct him to the carvings I’d made on my prison doors. There was the story of my first days in this world after crossing the Void and of the rise of my cult, made up of the primitive faeries that had lived in this land. “Originally, it was a glorious and enchanting place, called the ‘Court of Wings’ by my supplicants. Later, as it filled with decadence and blood and death, it became known as the ‘Court of Ruin’, and that sadly became its legacy.”

Azriel opened his mouth to ask more questions, but then shut it again. As a spymaster, he struggled with the burning desire to know more versus the price he knew I would eventually ask for such knowledge.

His curiosity won out.

“Why refer to your court as one of ‘wings’?”

That hadn’t been the question I’d been expecting.

Interesting.

“You’d rather know that than the end of my tale—the part about ‘ruin’?”

“You’ll tell me that eventually,” he said without sounding boastful.

Had I become that predictable, or was he just that good at sizing up his opponents?

“Will I?” I asked and made sure he heard the dangerous edge to my tone.

I didn’t like being tested.

He cleared his throat. “Actually, I’ve been sent here on a rather urgent matter. Perhaps we can put off that discussion for another time?” He peered into the absolute darkness, searching for me. “May I see and speak with you today about my errand?”

The sudden switch caught my interest, for Azriel would never be so rude unless the want of my services was great. “Now you’ve got _me_ curious, shadowsinger,” I said and stepped into his circle of light, ending our game. It had been fun while it had lasted, but it was clear from my visitor’s expression that he was in no mood for such amusements. I stepped out of the darkness, appearing right next to him. “What is your need, my adept Thief of Secrets? Ask me.”

He seemed relieved that I’d agreed to his audience, so much so that he hadn’t blinked an eye at the endearment that had slipped from my mouth.

“My Lord begs a favour. Rhysand desires to know if you can read the Leshon Hakodesh, the Holy Tongue.”

I stared up at him, at that handsome face etched in ice, at the cat-like hazel eyes that burned a green-gold mystery in the light from the torch he held…and I felt my blood abruptly quicken and my words arrested by a strange, sentimental tugging upon my blackened soul.

He was _so_ beautiful.

So alive in every way…and yet death followed after him, haunted his footsteps.

_It’s just the smell of the bones he carries. Heady and sweet. That’s all it is._

“Do you know it?” he pressed, but I was having the strangest reaction to being this close to him again after our last visit, and found it difficult to speak all of a sudden. My throat closed up, my nose was filled with the scent of his leather and his sweat, my tongue was twisted.

‒And deep, _deep_ inside me, in a place I’d sworn was long dead and buried under my bloodied, cynical heart, under layers of contempt and physical repulsion and emotional desolation, something changed.

**_Click._ **

For the first time in a very long time, I felt fear.

Distracted as I was by drinking in my fill of his beauty, I didn’t notice at first how he’d sent his sneaky shadows creeping towards me. It wasn’t until I actually heard them cajoling me in a lover’s whisper to tell him my secrets that I realised what he was attempting to do.

Irritated by both my distraction and his attempt to force my hand, I blew a small stream of air at the sly attackers, fortifying my breath with the arresting magick of Death.

Curling wisps of inky smoke stopped instantly in their tracks, unable to move forward, unwilling to risk destruction. They swirled and eddied in frustration as they drifted mere inches above the height of the stone floor, thwarted by my barrier. Their whispers grew harsher, more hissed, agitated.

Hot anger flared through me that Azriel would dare try such a thing. I stepped back, hissing at him.

“Would you attempt to rip the answers from _me_ , daemati? I could kill you where you stand with a mere thought!”

The sharp edged reminder of who I was, what I knew about him, and that our relationship had always existed from a place of mutual respect that had now been jeopardized caused Azriel to drop his eyes in shame.

“I apologise,” he murmured, his contrition sincere. I sensed his remorse, and following alongside it a trickle of self-loathing, something I hadn’t expected from him. “It’s just that things are...they’re…”

“Desperate,” I supplied when he faltered, guessing as much by his rash action.

He nodded. To my surprise, he dropped to one knee. “I offer you atonement.”

Just like that, I was defeated.

I sighed. It seemed I was weak where Illyrians were concerned. Besides, if there was one surety in this world, it was that members of the Night Court had been designed to frequently try my patience.

Rarely had any of them so blatantly tempted my wrath, though—and certainly not without a bribe in advance to soften the blow and sweeten the pot. That he was offering me himself now…

“You must truly need my help to dare such stupidity.”

He only bowed his head lower. “Please.”

It was the pleading that swept away the last of my wrath, for I knew this male would never beg for anything. That he was humbling himself now meant that not only was he failing in his latest tasks, but that he was also beginning to despair.

That understanding brought me no joy. Quite the opposite, in fact.

However, with the Fae, nothing was ever to be given away for free. They lived to bargain, and I knew precisely what to ask from him, as I had urgent needs, too. “In addition to the bag of bones you’ll be bringing me from our last agreement, the next time you hunt something big, you will bring me all of that prey’s bones as well,” I instructed. “After you’ve personally cleaned them, of course. Yours must be the only hands to touch them.”

I wanted to taste the death he created.

I wanted his magick inside me, filling me.

He nodded. “As you will it.”

“Of course.”

I was suddenly very tired. Removing bones from my walls and re-forging them to fulfill my needs took a great deal of energy, as did the carving of new bone, and although I rarely needed sleep here in this world, where time moved slowly and I aged at a snail’s pace, I was not truly immortal. No creature on this planet was, not even Azriel’s friend, the angel.

Death would come for all of us, eventually.

I crossed my lair, banishing it of shadows for the now, and slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. I drew the Morrigan’s long, graceful knees to my chest, and felt the smooth, cold granite under my bare toes. The dress Azriel had put me in shimmered with blue starlight in the torch he carried, and I noted how his eyes were drawn to its gleam and its provocative dips…noted the lust he fought to hide as he looked his fill of the woman he could never have.

I sighed again.

“Once I enjoyed the sight of adherents and penitents doing obeisance before me, but now…I do not care to see you kneeling on my floor, Shadowsinger. Rise.”

He was half way returned to his feet when I added:

“Unless you _wish_ to service me, thus.”

I don’t think I have ever seen anyone as surprised as Azriel was in that moment. His head jerked up and his eyes zeroed in on me, widening in astonishment at my jest.

Laughter bubbled up in my chest, escaped through my full, perfectly rouged mouth. How I enjoyed that moment, the reaction I achieved when I said or did something wholly unexpected. I did not have the luxury of seeing it often, so I relished it now.

“To answer your question, no, I cannot. The Holy Tongue is unreadable to my kind. A servant of Death is not allowed to fathom the magick of Life. It is only in abstract, in theory that I understand the purpose and use of the Cauldron and the Books of Breathings. I could never recreate what they do, nor interpret their true mysteries.”

“May I ask why?”

Such humbleness. He’d learned his lessons well today.

“Creation, like love, requires complete selflessness,” I told him. “When I embraced my Ruin over my Wings, I…lost such a gift.”

 _“Not true, not true!”_ my shadows whispered in my ears, but I shushed them once more, not wanting to listen to such hopeful prattling. I needed no further disappointments in my life.

“I send you back to your High Lord with no hope for an easy answer.”

Azriel frowned. “Rhysand will be discouraged, that is true.”

I watched him climb to his feet and felt again, that unexpected and sudden desire to keep him close for a little longer. I gave into it…but on my terms.

“Come, now, Illyrian. Have I ever left you empty-handed?”

Once again, I caught him off guard. “I…I have nothing to offer you for any trade of information, except these bones that were already promised.” He patted the satchel at his hip, and then pulled the strap over his head and set them gently on the ground next to the door. The bones inside clacked together softly and my stomach rumbled with hunger. “And I have already consented to bring you my next kill. What more do you want?”

I considered that. What more did I want from him? He was Fae, and a bargain was in their blood…

“You will come back and visit me seven days hence,” I said, and held up a hand as he made to protest. “If your High Lord does not have need of you, that is. You will stay for at least three hours. We will talk. Trade secrets.”

I knew that last would be like candy to him, an irresistible temptation. I threw down a bit more extra bait: an explanation for my request, something I might not have otherwise done, except today…today I was feeling a bit free with my tongue.

“My time in this world is ending. I would like to share my stories with others, so they will not fade from all memory.”

Azriel’s stare pierced straight through to my soul, and I knew he fathomed my meaning. “You don’t want to be forgotten.”

“Who does, shadowsinger?”

He grunted in agreement.

“So, do we have a deal?”

His agreement was warily wrung from him, and I understood why: we were entering a dangerous time now that Feyre Curse-breaker had stolen the half of the Book of Breathings from Tarquin, the High Lord of Summer. The earth had shuddered as she’d taken it from its place of rest and opened it, and I’d felt the hands of fate tighten around my throat.

“Very well, then here is my advice: when the Morrigan asks to speak to the Mortal Queens within their own realm, refuse her. Insist she not go. Do not allow her to talk Rhysand into allowing it.”

Azriel had stiffened at his female’s name, and his focus had become absolute as my warning hit him hard. “Why?” he asked.

I gave him the only answer I knew would sway him. “I have used some of my strength and Gazed, and seen a Death Mark upon her brow as she stands before the queens and shames them. They will never forget such a slight. I believe she can avoid that fate if she avoids them…for the now.”

The torch in the spymaster’s hand shook. He took several deep breaths, seeking to calm the heart I could hear pounding under his ribs. “Thank you,” he finally said and then bowed at the waist, eyes to the floor, exposing the back of his neck to me in the way of one who was profoundly grateful. “I owe you.”

I waved him off. “Seven days hence, share with me your presence, a bit of your time, and a few choice words in conversation. That is all I require.”

He left soon after that, and I shut the door to my prison behind him, readjusting to my true body and the cool, soothing balm of darkness once he was out of sight.

I sat for a long time, thinking about the changes wrought in me today, wondering what they all meant. I had felt something come to life within me as I’d stood before Azriel, a sensation I hadn’t experienced since before I’d felt _her_ die—the female I’d made my own, the mother of the Illyrians, my betrayer. I’d felt need for something other than the grave.

Until this afternoon, I’d believed my sex as withered as my heart, but I was finding that being stalked by Death was altering how I viewed my life, stirring me in strange ways, and causing me to wonder about the legacy I would leave behind.

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

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**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember: Prythian is not the name of the entire world in this series, but only of the Fae lands that contain the Seven Courts, the middle ground called Under the Mountain (Amarantha’s old court and where the Weaver lives), the territory of the Illyrians, and the Western Isles (where The Prison is located). The Mortal Lands do not have a name in novel canon, and they only exist beneath The Wall on the island of Prythian and on the largest island in the world, called simply ‘the Continent’ (before Miryam and Drakon freed that territory for humans, it had been called the Black Lands), which is to the east of Prythian. Hybern is the island to the west of Prythian. The island of Cretea, where Miryam and Drakon hid after the first war, is not exactly pinpointed on the map, as it is an island hidden by magic.
> 
> Please review!


	4. Cursed Tongue

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter takes place in the middle of Chapter 39 of "A Court of Mist and Fury", in the weeks between Amren getting the Fae half of the Book of Breathings and beginning to translate it and Azriel attempting to break into the mortal queen’s courts. Feyre makes mention that it’s “weeks of waiting” before they hear any response from the queens to their request to meet, and in that time, Azriel is missing on a daily basis from the House of Wind, returning in the evenings (if at all some nights).
> 
> I’m making use of that blank period of time to head canon this chapter to allow Azriel to visit the Bone Carver.

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**~.~.~.~.~**

_**“I’d met him once, when Rhys took me with him to ask a question. At the time, I didn’t know I was looking into the face of Andromache, my future lover. In retrospect, I think the Bone Carver gave me that vision…to give me a little hope and some peace from a world that was trying to tear ME into little pieces and destroy my hope.”** _

_**~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Morrigan** _

**~.~.~.~.~**

.

 

“Where were you born?”

It was gently asked, but I could feel Azriel’s hunger for my secrets, even across the distance that separated us. I’m sure he’d spent some of the last seven days since our last discussion obsessing over how he could manipulate me into telling him everything I knew.

As if he could, if I didn’t wish it.

Fortunately for him, I’d chosen him for my biographer years ago. No deceit necessary.

“On a dying world made of red sand and storm-ravaged earth, far across the Void,” I told him.

From his position sitting on the floor across the room from me, I watched him shift positions several times—not from physical discomfort, but mental. The Fae and Humans of this world clung to their ancient beliefs that they had been specially created by the Mother and the Cauldron, and that no other world but this one existed. The theory that they were somehow special and unique in the universe, and somehow blessed for it, had just been disproved.

In one sentence, I’d changed his entire view of his faith. I’d turned his reality on its head.

“The Void?”

I settled against the wall at my back, the smooth bones I’d magicked flat and inlaid across it over the last week giving me a comfortable position to recline against. As it touched my skin—or rather, the skin of my current avatar, the Morrigan—I could feel the residual emotions contained within the transfigured material: the thrill and fear of the chase, the triumph of the kill, and the resignation of death. It took concentration on my part to shut out the eroticism of such impressions.

“There are a multitude of habitable worlds in the cosmos, shadowsinger, and they each contain an army of life in many beautiful and grotesque forms. These planets are separated by vast expanses of utter darkness and complete silence—a blanket of death for all living things that attempt to cross it. This is the Void. It was made to keep us apart, to ensure noninterference. Separate worlds, separate species, never meant to meet or mate.”

I watched Azriel turn that information over in his brain, watched until it became clear he’d riddled through my words and understood the ramifications of what I was telling him: First that his world was not as unique as the Fae and humans would have their kind believe. They were but one of thousands of planets that could and did sustain life, and that each world had its own evolved predators and prey that were unique to its natural order. Second that I had somehow managed to break that natural order.

“Yet, somehow you crossed that Void and came here.”

I nodded. “An accident, believe it or not.”

“How?”

Indeed. That was the question, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know what power tore the way open between my world and yours, to be honest.” My mind’s eye turned inward as I relived the memory. “That day, my two siblings and I were deep under the surface of our planet, traveling through subterranean caverns, determined to escape the disease that had ravaged our crèche and killed most of our people. And we came across this strange light…and we fell through it and tumbled, literally, into your world.”

“Disease? But…you’re a god!” he protested.

Azriel had latched on to the one part of my tale I hadn’t intended to lead with, ironically enough.

I laughed at such a silly claim. “No, I’m merely like your Amren and the others here in The Prison: a being with innate powers that are greater than those normally found in your world. To your primitive ancestors, that made me a god, but I am no more immortal than you are.” At his doubtful expression, I reminded him, “I have already told you I will die, and soon.”

That dark head of his shook with disbelief. “That seems impossible to believe. You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, and you don’t age as mortals do.”

I waved off his contention. “Oh, I do all of those things. You just don’t see it. Time here in Prythian is different from my home world. It’s…slower.”

“I don’t understand.”

In a blink, I was next to him, kneeling at his feet. No winnowing required. He didn’t even see me move. He _did_ see me once I’d stopped, however, and that caused him to jerk back, pulling up his legs so they were tight to his body. His wings and his shadows gathered around his hunched form at the presence of a presumed threat and his siphons flared to life, banishing the darkest corners of my lair with their blue flame.

I grinned at him, finding his reaction entertaining. “I don’t make it a habit of doing that very often, as it takes tremendous energy for me to move at my ‘normal’ speed here, but as you can see, it _can_ be done.”

Azriel did not reply. Instead, he simply stared at me…in wide-eyed fear.

My amusement fled.

I really should not have felt any guilt or regret for scaring him. That he held me at arm’s length and stared at me in awe was how it should be, in fact. I wasn’t Fae, wasn’t human, I wasn’t even Illyrian—I was the monster whose seed combined with a High Fae of this world to create their race. I was progenitor, and he was not my friend and should not be my lover. I was a soldier of death, doomed and dooming to all who came too close.

The longer I stared into his beautiful, haunted face, though, the more difficult it became to justify what I was thinking. When I dropped my eyes to his scarred hands, my resolve shattered completely.

He’d been terrorized enough in his life, and I’d had enough of menacing others for the time being.

“I won’t hurt you,” I told him, sitting back on my haunches and assuming a non-threatening pose. “In all the years of our acquaintance, I never have, have I?”

His throat dipped as he swallowed rather hard. “No, you haven’t.” Again, he was wary and deferential in how he spoke to me; as if he knew he was tempting a wild animal of greater power. His wings and shadows stayed between us as a shield, although the siphons on his armor flickered out, dimming the room until only the dull, orange torchlight was all that remained between us and total darkness. “But the record of The Prison kept in the library beneath the House of Wind called you a ‘Death Knight’.”

I dropped my eyes to the floor with shame, recalling precisely how I’d attained that title. “And you assumed the name was well-earned.”

“Wasn’t it?”

I huffed bitterly. The list of my sins was long enough to pave the road between here and Valeris; the accounting of the names of my victims a tome the size of which could rival the mountain we sat under. My Ruin, and the ruin of my siblings, had ended an Age. “Yes. I have done unspeakable things, Illyrian. I will not pretend otherwise.”

He was silent for a bit. “We all have,” he finally admitted. “In that, you are not alone.”

I chanced a look at his face, was oddly relieved to find it a bit less wary, a little more accepting. “You researched me, then?”

Strangely, that made my heart beat a little faster.

“Yes,” he said. “There was very little to be found out, however.”

I nodded. “No, I’d expect not. Most of the knowledge of the First and Second Ages of this world were lost long ago, and I arrived here at the end of the former and the beginning of the later. Not even the Day Court’s extensive libraries contain reference to much of those years.” Slowly, I wiggled forward as I spoke, stopping once more at the creaking of his leathery wings tightening up to preserve the barrier he’d earlier erected between us, reminding me that trust was a thing that took time to build. “I will promise you this, Azriel,” I offered, desperate to have him return after today. If for no other reason, I truly had need of him, and could not afford to jeopardize this last chance with my monstrous reputation and ways. “I will do you no harm. Not ever.”

There was silence for a long while after I dropped that offer between us.

His gold-green eyes studied me, their hawkish intelligence attempting to read my intentions and study my sincerity. He weighed his odds and his options in those few moments.

“And what if I was to betray you? To attempt to kill you right here?”

I peeked up at him through impossibly long, sooty lashes and considered how best to prove my sincerity. The answer came to me a moment later in a flash of intuition: the Morrigan’s power of truth.

One of the perks of my curse was the ability to take on not just the face and form of others, but to be able to conjure their abilities, too. I doubted my ‘captor’—my High Fae lover, Phaedra, had known such an outcome would occur when she’d cast this unholy spell upon me all those millennia ago, because she’d certainly have taken steps then to prevent it. Fortunately, she hadn’t guessed at such a consequence, and I’d used her lack of insight to my advantage. Quite often, in fact. It was how I’d managed to escape my cell that first morning, when the Lord of the Night Court then had seen his blooded son in my place, thus allowing me to step through his magical wards after him…

Harnessing the power of my current form, I wielded it to my advantage this time, too.

“I would allow you to strike true without retribution, as I am a creature of my word,” I answered him, and I watched him shrink back further against the wall as my TRUTH washed over him. “However, I ask you to consider this much before you do: my memories contain thirty-thousand years of your world’s history, as well as all the knowledge I had of my home world. Would you risk the loss of all that information and knowledge, all that history and discovery?” I leaned towards him, met his eye. “There are no written records for the things I know, Spy Master. None. They all burned in the Great Cataclysm at the end of the Second Age.”

I knew I had his interest then with the mention of a historical event which none of his modern records contained.

“Would you risk that simply to rid the world of me?”

To my surprise, he seemed legitimately torn.

Using the Morrigan’s powers once more, this time in reverse, I read his TRUTH from his mind: to him, I was a monster. I was ‘other’, ‘outsider’, a creature who did not belong here. Worse, I divined and brought death. That was my talent, my malediction, and therefore I was a threat to his friends and family. I knew he would do anything for them—for the woman he loved and for his High Lord, for his brother-in-arms, Cassian, and even his future High Lady. He would kill both myself and the angel, Amren, if need be, and he would lose no sleep over such an act if he felt it was to keep his own safe.

He would destroy me if need be, but he would mourn my loss, if only for the knowledge I held.

In desperation, I threw out another lure in an attempt to change his mind. “You would attempt to kill me, despite my fated involvement in the war to come?”

He sat up straighter at that, suddenly interested.

Moving slowly, I reached out and lightly caressed along the ridge of one of his wings, making him shiver with something other than fear for the first time. I was, after all, wearing the face of his lady-love. “Twice you’ve asked about my death, Azriel, and I know what it is you _really_ wish to know about it: will it come in service to your cause or in opposition?”

“You would fight for Hybern then?” he asked, and moved his wing out of my reach.

My chest caved a little at his accusation, but I smiled through it, though I knew it to be a sad smile. “No, I will not.” I looked at him again, at the impossibly handsome face that had begun haunting my dreams of late, and despite all the screaming in my head in warning, I bared a piece of my soul to him and spoke with Morrigan’s TRUTH once more: “I will meet my end for _your_ cause, Illyrian, standing between you and your enemies.”

Between one heartbeat and the next, he just stopped breathing.

_“What?”_

He sounded genuinely distressed and astonished at what I’d revealed.

I sat back, dropping away from the temptation he presented. I was getting too close again, and that was something I couldn’t allow. Hadn’t I learned my lesson the first time I’d wanted someone I couldn’t have? What foolishness that had been…

“You have my promise of no-harm,” I said, climbing to my feet and standing over him. I stepped backwards slowly while keeping my eyes on him, trusting my shadows to cushion me before I met the wall. “And now I will tell you the story of my arrival here on your world, if you would stay to hear it.”

Perhaps it was the fact that I’d spoken earnestly to him and appeased his concerns about my loyalty, but his wings slowly unfolded and his shadows relaxed, falling as a soft mist around him to the floor. He leaned his elbows on his bent knees and leaned back against the wall, indicating that he had agreed to my terms, and was now all-ears.

“I’m listening,” he said.

 

* * *

 

I told him of my doomed red world with its fickle climate and its erratic storms, and about my people and their descent into barbarity with the rapid decline of their civilization.

Azriel was both enthralled with my tale, and horrified by it.

"Once, we soared the sky and embraced the winds as you Illyrians, Seraphim, and Peregryns do now," I told him, "but at some point, my people became too enamoured of the riches to be found within the ground, and so they stopped being creatures of the air and instead became beasts of the earth. In their greed, they drilled deep into the planet's crust, destabilizing it as they mined for prized gems and special rocks and precious fuels. For centuries, they scorched our sky with the fires of that ravenous industry as well, destroying the rivers and the oceans and the vast forests. The result was a thinning of the natural air barrier between us and the Void, which allowed for more light and heat to bear down on us from our bright day star in the sky."

"Bright day star…your sun, you mean?"

I nodded. "Much of the great oceans boiled away over time because of the increased warming. The weather changed, becoming more violent, less forgiving. Sometimes the winds were cold enough to freeze a person where they stood, and other times, they were hot enough to bake you in your skin. By then, our surface-dwelling cities had rapidly dissolved in the extreme conditions, until they were little more than particles of rust adding to the red-orange landscape, and so my people were driven underground. We came up only when there was a lull in the storms."

I knew that to the Fae, who were creatures of the whispering forest, and of the moving waters, and enjoyed the playful winds at their very heart, the dead world I described was anathema.

"Where we lived, there was only dead soil and rock in every direction—a vast desert, that surrounded our little oasis, what we called our 'crèche'."

"A tragedy," my companion said of the situation, and there was no masking his repugnance of what I'd recounted. I agreed. What my predecessors had done centuries before my birth had driven us, their legacy, into a fierce struggle for survival. "How did you endure?"

I glanced at him. "As all things do when they must: savagely."

We discussed the crèches then, those small pockets of rock in the middle of the desert that were entrances to the caves, where the last of us lived, and their interconnected web-work of underground tunnels—ironically, those carved out by our voracious ancestors—that allowed brave, daring traders to pass from one to the other beneath the surface to avoid the storms and the heat. Their constant movement, their trade of information and goods, was the last stubborn remnant of our fading society.

“No crèche was ever large enough to sustain a population of more than fifty or sixty at a time, so we had to split up between them,” I explained, when he asked why we didn’t all dwell in the same place. “Also, some caves in other parts of the world were better for growing the different kinds of moss and lichen we subsisted off of, and under others, there were giant lakes where fish and other creatures lived and were cultivated for food or harvested for their fur, their scales, their shells, or sea-silk. It was a delicate balance we all had to maintain, and we worked together across the miles to make it work. At first, we all knew that no single crèche could afford to become greedy, or it would be the end of us all. But over time…things changed.”

I told him then about our religious practises, which had evolved with our circumstances. “Our sky gods became earth demons, and our once-upon-a-time devotion to life morphed into one for death.”

“Is that why you’re called a ‘Death Knight’?”

“No. I earned that name here, in this world.”

He was silent, but I could hear his unspoken desire to know what it meant, what it entailed. I sighed resigned to tell that story, eventually, but I wasn’t ready to tread there today. Not yet. Instead, I gave him an indirect answer, hoping to lead him off in another direction. “It was a title given to me in cruel jest.” I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cool wall. “It’s the same for the sobriquet, ‘the Bone Carver’.”

“A mockery? By whom?”

“Someone I once loved.”

Azriel remained quiet for a long time after that revelation. Apparently, I’d shocked him with the thought that I could ever feel such an emotion, much less be betrayed by it.

“I…I never considered‒” he began, but stopped, unsure if he should go on.

I smiled at the return of his wariness. “That I had feelings? You aren’t the first to think that way.”

He said nothing, and when I opened my eyes and looked at him again, he was staring at his scarred hands, frowning. “I’ve only ever thought of you as a monster,” he admitted, “as ‘the Bone Carver’—as a creature, not a person. Just as so many have looked and thought of me when they see my shadows and realise I am not like them.” He glanced up at me, and there was real regret in his flickering hazel eyes. “Forgive me.”

We stared at each other for a long while and said nothing, and although I knew Azriel looked and saw the beautiful, wild Morrigan staring back at him, I also thought that, for the first time in a very long time, someone could see me underneath the mask, too.

The torch’s light grew low, beginning to dim at long last. He’d stayed longer than the allotted three hours of our deal. I felt a reward was in order for that alone. “Ask me,” I whispered, for I knew what he wanted to know…even as I knew I would be unable to answer his question.

His chest expanded as he took a deep breath, and then he let it out slowly. “What is your true name?”

I felt hot, hateful tears slip down my porcelain-perfect cheeks, felt my heart catch with such resentment that I thought it would crush me under its weight.

“I wish, more than anything, that I could tell you.”

‒Because for the first time in ages, I wanted someone to know the real me.

The torch gutted out, plunging us into darkness.

“But it seems our time is up,” I said instead.

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**

 

 


	5. Beguiling and Begging

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like the previous chapter, this chapter takes place in the middle of Chapter 39 of "A Court of Mist and Fury", just three days after chapter 4 of this fic.
> 
> Remember in Chapter 34 of “A Court of Mist and Fury”, Feyre visited Tarquin’s treasure trove at the Summer Court and saw the ruby necklace (which he gifted her), as well as a necklace of black diamonds? And how she gave that ruby necklace to Amren? And how Cassian and Azriel use siphons to channel their magic? Well, this chapter makes use of all that canon information.
> 
> Osedax = Latin for “bone-eating”
> 
> Remember that this is a dark drama with sex & romance (eventually). Warning: mentions of skinning, deadly disease, and incestuous breeding in this chapter. You've been warned!

 

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**~.~.~.~.~**

**_“I’m not sure how the Bone Carver ever managed to withstand such corruption, honestly._ **

**_I know the few times I had unleashed Death magick at my enemies, I nearly lost myself to its endless, dark hunger.”_ **

**_~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court_ **

**~.~.~.~.~**

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The shadowsinger had brought me quite the cache of bones again when he returned three days later with a large bag filled to overflowing with broken pieces from a whale’s skeleton.

Digging into its depths, I pulled out and examined a radius bone, letting the piece tell me of the animal’s death. _Tired, old, sleep,_ it sang to me, and I knew this creature had died naturally from advanced age. It had washed up on a shore somewhere warm, closer to the equator, and there took its last rattling breath after a long, satisfying life.

There was magick in this sort of death, too. Not all power required violence to initiate it.

Stomach rumbling with renewed hunger, I immediately set to sorting through the weathered segments as I continued to speak with him about my past, about a world he’d never know except through my memories. “I told you, my people were little better than savages by the time I was born. All our inventions and discoveries had been wiped away centuries before when the climate shifted and our civilization crumbled.”

“But not one book of science or magic survived?” he pressed, seemingly boggled by such loss.  

I shrugged. “If there were any, I certainly never saw them. It’s possible the elders of our crèche kept them well-hidden, I suppose. They tended to keep the best things for themselves.” I inspected a smallish bone—a broken piece from the hyroid cluster. This I could use as a carving instrument, now that the one I’d most recently relied upon had been whittled down too far for such use. I put it aside for later. “It’s a rather moot point now, though, isn’t it? More than thirty millennia have passed. I doubt my people still exist on that dusty, dead planet, much less any sort of book-like materials from the time before we became cave dwellers.”

He seemed disappointed in my answer. “It is a shame that such knowledge of your world was lost—even to you, its rightful inheritor.”

I withdrew a large, white section of vertebrae and set that on the other side of me, saving that for my dinner later, after Azriel left. “Yes, well, Nature makes it a habit to put us back in our place when our hubris tries her patience…and my people had certainly done more than their fair share of such pushing.” I thought on what my world must have been like once, with its green valleys and forests filled with rainbows, and I held no sympathy for my kind for their foolishness. “We got what we’d deserved for destroying such beauty.”

“Was there _nothing_ of value that you managed to bring with you into this world, then?” he asked. “No remnant of your home that might still exist somewhere to find?”

I paused as thoughts of fiery red gems sliding against bare skin and Phaedra’s husky laugh brought me up short, trapping me in a memory of happier times.

Azriel noticed my hesitation and pounced. “Was it a community relic or something with personal importance?”

“It was…both.” I glanced over at him, at the eagerness reflected in his eyes. Oh, yes, he wanted my secrets very badly. “Do you recall the necklace Feyre Cursebreaker was gifted by the High Lord of Summer? The rubies inset in gold?”

His gaze turned inward as he attempted to call up the memory. “Yes, I believe she gave them to Amren.”

I snorted. “Fitting.”

“Those were from your world?”

The thought pained me, of how I’d obtained them. “They and others like them. Rubies and white and black diamonds specifically, the stones of the earth that my ancestors destroyed our world to obtain, _those_ were our crèche’s riches—not water, not food. We sat atop an old mine and brought up the gems of the earth to trade for what we needed from other crèches.”

He hesitated on his next question, and so I prompted him with my usual, _“ask me”_ lead-in.

“What use did you have for gems in such a world as you’ve described?” he asked.

“They augmented our race’s magick and also served various religious functions.” At his confused look, I attempted to explain. “I have already told you that we traded our heavenly gods for earth demons. The gems were a part of that worship. They were the reason we turned our eyes from the skies to begin with. We worshipped them, gave them holy significance.” His sapphire siphons winked at me in the torchlight and I waved at them to draw his attention to his own use of such things. “You know their power, how they may be used to channel magick, to amplify or contain it. Our priests used the rubies and the diamonds to cast their spells to keep our crèche safe by mitigating the worst of the freezing winds and the searing heat.”

He looked thoughtful. “So, you took some of them with you when you left your crèche.”

I picked through the bag of bones again, withdrawing one of the whale’s phalanges. It was long enough to weave between my fingers. I used it to put the Morrigan’s impossibly long hair up, pinning the golden mass in place with the bone. “I took them all,” I corrected him. “All the ones left on the altar. They obviously hadn’t helped my people survive the illness that claimed them, so I figured my siblings and I could use them instead in trade for a place in another crèche.”

I’d stepped over the dead, withered bodies at the altar’s feet in the doing, too, careful not to touch a single one of them, for fear of contagion. As the youngest and smallest of my siblings, that task had fallen to me that day. It had been a lucky thing I’d been something of a sneak-thief, for that self-taught skill had saved my life that day. Had I been a little older, a little wider, I’d never have escaped the touch of the infected priest who’d tried to stop me from stealing his religious icons.

“Practical,” the Spy Master complimented, as I allowed my shadows to whisper my truths to him of that day.

I stared at him, like speaking to like. “We do what is necessary, but that does not mean we don’t feel the regret later.”

He nodded in accord.

Yes, I was sure he’d had his own pool of remorse from having made difficult decisions in his life. Such was the way of the practical and the realist.

“You carried them with you in hand when you crossed the Void?”

With a slightly annoyed sigh, I let him know I’d exhausted this topic and would like to move on. Azriel, however, remained stubbornly silent, willing to wait out my pleasure for an answer to his question. The male was irritatingly persistent, as I’d maintained all along.

Again, I blamed that soft spot I harboured for Illyrians when I finally gave in. “No, when we found the rift, they were in a pouch on my person, and before you ask how it was I could have that sort of a thing, given how rare animals were on my planet, I would point out that it was made of Osedax skin, not animal.”

“Osedax?”

“That’s what my crèche was called,” I explained. “We were the Osedax tribe.”

It took him a moment longer than I’d anticipated for him to catch on to my meaning.

“You…you skinned your own people and used their flesh for _goods?”_

He sounded utterly appalled by the idea.

I glanced over at him, growing irritated with his naivety. “Only after they were already dead. And, you have no right to judge, Fae-born. You come from a world of plenty, a world teeming with life and resources. When you starve, it is not from necessity, but from whim and wickedness.” We both knew I was referring to that dead lunatic, Amarantha, who had held Prythian captive for a time. “We were not so lucky on my home world. We made do with what was available.”

I tied up the bag of bones and pushed it aside, deciding to forego the counting of its blessings for the moment. This discussion was of much greater importance, for how could he adequately describe my story someday if he didn’t enter now into a place of understanding with both its blessings and its horrors.

“But their skins?” he repeated.

The idea, it seemed, was too morally reprehensible for him to yet concede.

“It was done with advanced consent, if that helps,” I offered.

He stared at me, even more horrified. “It really doesn’t.”

I sighed, frustrated by his impracticality in this case. “I believe we have already established that survival sometimes comes at the price of one’s civility and pride, have we not?” I picked at the exquisite, silken gown he’d put me in this time and grimaced at its frills and femininity. My manners were certainly stretched thin every time I was thrust into this role…and my dignity took the hit every time, as well. Even the real Morrigan used her beauty as a mask for her true feelings. “One might make mention of the fact that your Court of Nightmares is just as its name suggests, and yet your High Lord and you in his Inner Circle tolerate them for a purpose. They serve your needs and so you all overlook its citizen’s depravity and cruelty out of necessity. Such is the way of all things.”

Azriel considered my reminder of his hypocrisy in silence for a long while, and I allowed him the time to come to terms with it, for this was just the beginning of my tale, and that he was already having doubts about learning the rest was disquieting. I needed him to stay, to listen, to remember, and to _understand_ , for an historian is only as good as his memory and his context for a subject.

So I waited with my mouth closed and my eyes wide open. Simultaneously, I sent my senses out into The Prison, to listen for any sounds from the others who remained. I knew the Wraith was out and about again, zipping down corridors and gossiping to anyone who would listen that the Night Court’s Shadowsinger had returned and was in seclusion with me _again_ , but from the remaining prisoners, there was only the expected stillness and quiet that comes from those straining to hear an actual conversation through the earth.

I sent an inky shadow up through the cracks, into the soil, and then into each of their cells to remind them that eavesdropping was rude.

Within moments, there came the sounds of resentful withdrawal from above, and in one or two cases, a whimper of fear as well. I’ll admit it took an effort of will not to snicker at causing such disappointment, as my fellow prisoners were a nosy, boorish lot—hence the reason I refused to associate with any of them.

Well, that was _one_ of the reasons, anyway…

“Why rubies and black diamonds?” Azriel finally asked me, reclaiming my whole attention. “Why not emeralds or topaz, or other stones?”

His topic change, it seemed, was the best I was going to get from him on the subject of my people’s savagery. At least he wasn’t as close-minded to the story as I’d anticipated, however. That gave me some small measure of hope.

Still, this moral hurdle did make me worry about how he’d take the barbarity his ancestors in this world had engaged in much later, when my Court was nearing the end of its reign, and Ruin had taken its people. I wasn’t sure that telling him such things might not just shatter all his illusions about the Fae.

Then there was the issue of my _odd_ diet, should the topic ever come up of…

“Our crèche was situated over an old mine that produced only those gem types. There were white diamonds as well,” I reminded him, focusing on satisfying his curiosity. Besides, of the three kinds of gems found in our caves, those were _my_ favoured siphons, and the ones I’d used most often. My familiarity with them was greater than that of other jewels. “As I said, each kind of gem focuses a different type of magick, and using them, we were all able to protect our crèche from storms. Rubies for fire magick to heat our caves and ward off the killing ice, black diamonds for divination magick to see the patterns of the storms everywhere on the planet in the present moment, as well as foresee a short time into the future to predict changes, and white diamonds to harness the power of death and the dying for our other magical needs.”

Azriel looked at his arm bracers, at the gems imbedded in them.

I knew when he got it; his face lit up. “You taught us this,” he said with something like awe. “You…you taught the Fae about the power of gem-focus!”

I couldn’t help feeling a bit smug. Not ten minutes ago, he’d been ready to detest me and now here he was, realising there was an ‘up-side’ to my having lived such an abominable life.

He stroked over the smooth, oval face of the largest sapphire on his right arm. It had been skillfully crafted in such a way as to catch the light, but not to magnify it. It was a gem made for absorbing and channeling energy on the sly, which seemed quite apropos, given its owner. “Your people’s religion gave you this knowledge,” he reiterated, “and in turn you gave it to us.”

“Among other things,” I admitted. I slowly crossed over to where he was sitting against the wall and tapped each of the seven siphons on his person. “Blue sapphires are for shielding magick, as you well know.” Gently turning his right arm over, I caressed the dark indigo-amethysts along the seam of his leather bracer. Azriel’s hand twitched, as if he was nervous about me touching him, but I moved slowly and carefully, never giving him reason not to trust me. I’d given him my word that I would do him no harm, after all. “These focus you and are part of the reason why you are so calm.” Letting that arm go, I turned to the other. On the inside of his left wrist were two small, well-hidden white diamonds. “And I assume you use these to control your half-wraith friends?”

My guest looked warily up at me. “Nuala and Cerridwen are not controlled by anyone. They are free.”

“Is that so?” I stroked over the white diamonds, feeling the stored Death magick within them. “Interesting. Then what do you use these for?”

Our eyes met, and he knew I understood. I was probably the only person in the world who did, being the last Death Knight, a creature who teetered on the precipice of undead and living.

“Being half-wraith is an agonizing existence, never fully alive, yet not quite dead,” I murmured, captured by his intense, dark gaze. “Such creatures, their sanity… They never lasted very long in my Court before having to be put down. But you spare your two females by absorbing their pain, keeping them away from that edge.” I glanced down at the hand I held and realized how strong and elegant it was, despite its melted, fleshy scars. “That’s very compassionate of you.”

Carefully, Azriel extracted his hand from mine, and said, “They’re my friends,” as if that explained it all. And it did. It said everything about the kind of male he was under the façade of spy and torturer.

“There’s a wraith here, you know,” I told him.

He nodded.

Of course he’d know. Wraiths loved whispering to shadows.

“Do you know him?” he asked me.

I smiled. “I know _everyone_ , Spy Master.”

He glanced over at me, intense interest sparking in the bronze of his gaze, and I knew right then and there that I had won. Azriel would stay and listen, and he would return as often as possible until my story became his biggest secret…and in the telling, I would finally be free.

“I want to know everything you do,” he said.

I chuckled. “And so you shall.”

 

* * *

 

“The disease that killed my people started with an infestation,” I told him. “Our small crop of moss in the deeper caverns had become a nest for cave fleas. One of the children tending to it was bitten. What would be hours later by your counting, he became feverish and then pustules began forming upon his face. Within a day or two, he was coughing up blood everywhere, infecting all those tending to him. He died soon afterwards. And then his parents and siblings did, and everyone who’d come into contact with him, and so it spread. It burned like a wild storm through our families, until only a very few of us were left.”

Azriel turned to me, for by then, I was sitting next to him, our backs to the section of my wall he’d staked out as his own, it seemed. “How did you survive?”

“My twin sister, Stryga, had been bred months earlier during one of our religious rituals, and by then was swollen and heavy, and we worried for her and the whelp she carried. My eldest brother, Koschei, had kept her in his cave, which was on the outer ring of our community, where he preferred to live. Our parents died not too long before that in a cave-in, so I’d gone to stay with my brother and sister.”

“Where was her mate to care for her?”

I turned to him and smirked. “It’s quite possible Koschei had been the one to breed Stryga.”

At his obvious revulsion to the idea, I sighed.

“Remember what I told you earlier, shadowsinger: we were a dwindling race, desperate not to disappear—much like you Illyrians, if you think on it. As such, our adult females were used hard by all the adult men of the tribe during religious celebrations, which happened as often as the shifting of storms. We didn’t have the luxury of worrying about consanguinity in the caves, especially as most younglings didn’t survive the first three cycles of life—perhaps one in twenty, if they were lucky. Younger females were kept in a state of perpetual pregnancy once they began bleeding. It was the only way to keep us from dying out.”

My brooding companion stared at his scarred hands and considered that, as well as what I’d said about his own race, and how they ran along a similar mindset. Illyrian males used and abused their females, keeping them as breeders and servants—an attitude they’d adopted during the War of Wings, before the end of the Second Age. Of course, he didn’t know that part yet…

“Did you do such things, too?”

“You mean did I fuck my own sister?”

His attention snapped to me, as if he’d been surprised by my use of profanity.

“No,” I told him. “I wasn’t a man then, but a child on the cusp.”

He opened his mouth, but hesitated on his next question.

“Ask me,” I encouraged him. “Today, my secrets are free.”

That seemed to embolden him.

“How old were you when you came here?”

Shrugging, I tried to calculate the time, given the time differences between our worlds. “There, I’d survived to seventy-three storms. Here, by Fae counting, I suppose that would equate to fourteen years, give or take. My sister was bleeding by then, but I still hadn’t come into my manhood yet.” I glanced down at my own hands, wishing I could see them as they were today, in all their strength. These dainty, Morrigan-sized fingers were too elegant, too refined for me. “I’d been abnormally small for my age as a youngling, and slow to grow due to malnutrition.”

“And now?”

His question surprised me. Was he was really asking questions about _me_ —not about my people or our traditions or the ‘monster’ I’d become later, but about me, the person under the curse?

“Now?” I reiterated making sure I understood him correctly. “Do you mean to ask what I currently look like under this curse?”

He nodded and waited for my response, patient and attentive as usual.

I was floored. I knew his interest wasn’t a declaration of romantic interest; far from it. Still, it was flattering. I hadn’t brokered such attention in a _very_ long time.

A playful, frisky imp grabbed hold of me as I looked askance at him through hooded lids and dared to toss him a suggestive leer. “If you wanted to see me all grown up, Azriel, all you’d need to do is want it badly enough. I’ll appear before you, just as I am if you will it.”

The moment after I said it, I doubted my own claim. I wasn’t actually sure it was true, as when the spell had been initially cast upon me, it had been worded in a rather specific manner. However, I also knew there was wiggle room for breaking it by the right person. That individual had just never come around, and after millennia, I’d honestly believed they never would.

Could it be this Illyrian male sitting next to me was the key to breaking my curse?

I leaned closer to him and smiled up at him with wicked, teasing delight. My perfectly-shaped, soft breast brushed against his arm. Through the leather, I doubted he felt it, but I certainly did. It made me shiver.

“I promise you won’t be disappointed,” I huskily challenged him.

My visitor had gone preternaturally still, his expression both wary and filled with a palpable lust.

My lighthearted amusement was instantly dissolved under the heat of his stare, and I abruptly became aware of just how close we sat, how our eyes were locked upon the other, how his breath caressed my cheek as he exhaled‒

I _knew_ he looked down at me and saw _her_ , his beautiful, powerful Morrigan, the female he’d been pining for over the last five centuries, but in that moment in time, that mattered little to my starved and lonely soul. He was staring with such heat, such need and my body answered with a desperation I hadn’t expected. Everything tightened, and between my soft, shapely thighs, I felt my core go slick with need.

Azriel’s nostrils flared as he inhaled the scent of me, primed and aching for him, and a rumbling-purr escaped his chest.

It hit me then: this body I wore was simple mimicry of his lady love’s form, but the scent of it was all _mine_. He was reacting to _me._

My heart beat wildly against my ribs at that knowledge, and the invisible red thread that seemed to wind me tighter around this warrior tugged upon my soul once more, making its true self known to me at long last: a mate bond. It was a fragile and unsure fate, but it was there nonetheless, seeking to tether itself to the shadowsinger’s carefully guarded heart.

All the breath left me in a rush as pure terror took hold of me.

It couldn’t be! I’d already mated once, and one chance was all we ever had in this life for that kind of connection with another. My Phaedra was dead now, beyond my reach, beyond my vengeance…beyond my dreams.

‒And yet, _something_ on my side gazed back at Azriel with a matching hunger and need. _Something_ soul-enchanting pulled me towards him, even as I leaned away.

He reached out for me and I scrambled backwards on hands and knees to get as far away from him as I could.

Crossing the room in a flash, I cringed against the wall of bones at my back, feeling as helpless as I had as a child, when I’d first fallen into this foreign world with its eerie light and its strange sounds.

“Don’t,” I warned him as he stood in a smooth motion and dominantly spread his wings wide in a courtship display that Illyrian males were known to take when approaching a female they’d intended to conquer. Quickly, I erected an invisible ward between us with will and a silent push of magick. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I also was well-aware of how aggressive the winged Fae could be when they neglected their libidos for too long and saw a ripe opportunity before them. “Stop!”

Perhaps it had been the look of fear passing over the Morrigan’s face that had him abruptly realising how the monster within him was too close to the surface, for abruptly the siphons on the inside of his right wrist flared indigo-blue and his stance relaxed. His fists unclenched, his wings slowly retracted. Yes, his enormous erection still strained under his leathers, but the rest of him soothed and settled in a remarkably short period of time. He'd regained his infamous, well-practised calm. 

I kept the warding in place between us, just in case.

Azriel’s icy, furious gaze met mine. “You are not her,” he stated the obvious, his voice a growling, angry thing. “You will not tempt me. I will not fall for your tricks, _Bone Carver._ ”

With that, he turned and stormed out, his thunderous shadows rolling after him, a black mist that curled with rage. I watched him go, trembling inside and out. As soon as his form had faded into the darkness, I quickly magicked my doors shut and let out the breath I’d been holding, collapsing to my knees on the cold, hard ground.

By the Cauldron and the Great Mother, how could this have happened? More importantly, why now? My death was imminent…

‒But perhaps that was the exact reason.

The more I considered it, the more I became convinced: Stryga was behind Azriel's visits and the attraction between us.

‘The Weaver’, they called her, and for good reason, for although she was also a servant of Death, just as I and Koschei both were, my sister’s main magical strength relied primarily upon divining and coercing the future—never her own, despite her numerous attempts in the past, but for others she’d been known to alter the Mother’s tapestry on occasion. It took a lot out of her, but she did it, and usually not for any benign purpose.

She must have pulled some strings for me, literally.

But why? She hated me, had accused me of conspiring with Phaedra to trick her and bind her to the forest.

I could still recall the last thing she’d said to me. She’d begged me not to leave her completely bereft.

_“My jewellery! Please, at least leave me my diamonds!”_

But my lover’s wrath would not be soothed, and she had decided to punish my sister in the worst possible way, just as she had my brother. Phaedra had ripped the black diamond necklace from my twin’s throat and pocketed it for her own use, and then she’d locked Stryga in her small prison on the tiny patch of dead land in the middle of a forest she would never again rule.

I thought it ironic that much later, the mother of my children had given that beautiful necklace to our youngest daughter, who alone among her siblings had been born without wings, but with my family’s gift of ‘seeing’. And how eventually, that same necklace had ended up in her great-many-times-over-grandson’s treasure hoard at the Summer Court. If only Tarquin knew the power he’d nearly gifted to Feyre Cursebreaker the day he’d allowed her to view such precious heirlooms!

It had been something of a relief to me that she’d instead chosen Koschei’s rubies, for those gems were infinitely more stable. I was sure my eldest sibling would find it decidedly humorous as well that the angel of retribution, Amren, now owned them.

Was playing with our fates and sending Azriel to me now my twin’s way of reaching out for me in forgiveness, or her revenge?

Only time would tell, it seemed.

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**


	6. Relative Pin

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And again, like the previous two chapters, this chapter takes place in the middle of Chapter 39 of "A Court of Mist and Fury". It begins one week after chapter 5 of this fic.
> 
> For the sake of this fic, I have named the Rhysand’s mother in this chapter (she isn’t named in novel canon to date). If, at any time, Sarah J. Maas writes more of this universe and changes her name, I’ll edit the story to match canon.
> 
> A 'relative pin' is a chess term. When a piece cannot move (either legally or advisedly) because doing so would expose a valuable piece, usually the king or queen, to attack. Pins against the king are called absolute because it is then illegal to move the pinned piece. Other pins are called relative pins (where it is legal, if not necessarily judicious, to move the pinned piece out of the line of attack). It's a metaphor for this chapter.
> 
> Much love and great thanks to my beta, ladysashi! Noodles of lurf, dahling! :)

 

**.**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**_“I regret not having spoken to him, for I would have liked to sit with my greatest living ancestor and to learn more about his child, who had been the first High Lady of Summer."_ **

**_~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Tarquin, High Lord of the Summer Court_ **

**~.~.~.~.~**

.

 

A week passed and Azriel did not return to The Prison.

I wondered if the reason had to do with his reaction to me. Had it upset him almost as much as it had me? Or was he gone for an entirely different reason? Perhaps his attempt to sneak into the mortal queen’s courts wasn’t going well and it required his undivided attention at the moment?

Running my hands over the section of cleverly inset black diamonds on my doors, feeling them behind the bones I’d carefully laid over them to hide their presence from any visitors, I was tempted to cast a divination spell to better ‘see’. It wouldn’t be wise, I knew, as magical clairvoyancy had always been Stryga’s specialty, not mine, and the last attempt I’d made at glimpsing the future had drained much of my magical energies—hence the reason I’d needed Azriel to bring me so many bones.

I was tempted, nonetheless.

The future I’d observed in my most recent attempt had burned itself into my memory and haunted me ever since, though: I was going to die in white hot, searing flame.

I shuddered, and moved away from the winking black gems, refusing to use up any more of my strength trying to determine my fate. I should never have looked then, and I shouldn’t now. Besides, I needed to store up as much magic as possible between now and the end, and could not afford to waste it on determining Azriel’s whereabouts. He’d appear again when he had need of me.

Until then, I had plans of my own to make.

 

* * *

 

Another week passed.

I’d used the time to mold and carve bones, working almost feverishly and with little sleep to replace whole sections of my walls with my new scrimshaw stories. And in between the carving, I contemplated my fate.

The Wraith visited me on occasion, but he was careful never to pass my doors and enter my domain. He’d whisper to me from behind them, though, keeping me from feeling my isolation too keenly. In exchange, I allowed him to play with my shadows; they ran together up and down the corridors, racing and gossiping, wreaking havoc on the other prisoners’ peace.

As I took a break from my work, slumped against the wall with exhaustion, I leaned my head back and closed my eyes and instinctively reached for the mate bond between Azriel and me. It was there, in the darkness, stretching and glittering like an obsidian spider’s thread across the miles, magically and irrevocably binding me to him.

The idea had me shivering with a mix of emotions. I’d been here before. I knew the intense joy and the immense pain a mating could bring. As the High Lord Rhysand was discovering with his little Curse-breaker, bonding was addiction at its most terrifying, as it dulled the wits at the same time as it seduced the senses. For a male of immense power, that leash was simultaneously something to long for and to dread.

I was certainly feeling both.

The only question remaining was whether Azriel was aware of the bond on his end. Second matings had always been notoriously rare, and they were all but an anomaly in the current Age. Furthermore, his side of the tether had remained stubbornly silent and dark, despite my gentle prodding over the past few days. Did he feel me at all?

If so, he was ignoring me.

That thought had me gnashing my teeth in frustration. Even if we were never meant to be lovers, he could at least be male enough to face me and talk about it.

 _“Can you even hear me?”_ I called down the metaphysical line connecting us.

I knew from my first mating that it was possible to hear thoughts directed at each other in such a manner, but it required a willingness to participate.

_“Why don’t you answer?”_

I waited an indeterminate amount of time for a response, but none came. I tried again and again, first coaxing him to talk then, like some petulant lord-ling, demanding he reply. Finally, I gave up.

If Azriel was listening, he’d decided not to acknowledge me or the bond.

“To the Abyss with you then!” I both shouted and thought at him, and slammed my fist into the wall, shattering a sheet of recently carved bone. The sharp edges bit through my flesh, and hot blood flowed freely down my hand, but I hardly felt it for the anger burning through me. I’d always had a temper, and being denied anything had always sent me into a furious tailspin. “You’ll be back when you need something, as always!”

Jumping to my feet, I spent hours pacing and snapping, snarling and barking my displeasure until at last my frustration and fury subsided, and weariness returned full force. It slapped me down hard, and I collapsed back where I’d begun, limbs going loose as I leaned against the wall.

Above me, The Prison was graveyard silent and I could feel the other captives far above me arrested in their cages, most likely hiding in the darkest corners, listening in fear of my wrath. I was hungry again, and they all knew bones alone wouldn’t do this time around.

I huffed a cynical laugh as I tugged at the bond again.

“It seems information is all you want from me anyway,” I grumbled, resentful of that fact. “That, and looking at you with your Morrigan’s cow-eyed desire. Can’t keep away from that, can you, shadowsinger?” No male besotted with the unattainable could. I knew that firsthand. “We’re both masochists.”

I lay back on the floor and slapped a hand over my forehead, resigned to being self-pitying and ‘mate miserable’ for the rest of the day.

My twin, Stryga, was probably laughing her fool head off at my misery. She’d always been a mean bitch at heart, and had adored the anxiety she’d inspired by being ‘other’, finding my sentiment for the beings of this world amusing and ridiculous all at once. She’d been especially disdainful of my love for Phaedra.

 _“You’re too soft, Kharon,”_ she’d once told me. _“Mates, like soldiers and worshippers, are tools—meant to be used, not loved.”_

Her philosophy had never sat well with me. It had given poisoned thorns to her Court of Roses.

In truth, I’d never viewed the Fae or the humans of this world as my enemies, nor been very comfortable with them bowing and scraping before me. A multitude of them had been to my bed, in fact, and I’d sired generations of children from their various ranks in the ten-thousand years I’d lived among them. The Illyrians were mine, as was a single clan of non-winged Fae whose children would later become the progenitors of both the Summer Court’s and Day Court’s royal lines. And then there was Night’s High Lord, who had achieved what no other Illyrian could boast: he was both blooded royal and of wings.

…And yet, despite that parade of admirers and companions, I’d only ever loved once. I’d only taken one mate: Phaedra, who in the end had betrayed and chained me, too.

Not that I hadn’t seen that fate coming and willingly given into it.

Still, she’d turned her back on me and walked away. She’d left me to face the endless dark alone.

Now it seemed I was to be forced to suffer that experience again, this time with a male partner who either refused to acknowledge me or who was to be the hapless beneficiary of a one-sided, unwanted attraction from me.

All thanks to my twin, the manipulator of my fate.

“What are you really up to, my Black Diamond?” I murmured aloud, curious as to her angle.

I felt safe in the knowledge that my sister wouldn’t hear me refer to her by the childhood nickname I’d once affectionately called her, as she wasn’t a wind-whisperer or a shadowsinger, and I knew she’d never listened to the earth for its secrets, as Koschei and I did. Her power was in glimpsing bits of futures, in weaving randomness into pattern, and in star gazing and prophecy. Stryga fed on the living to foretell of Death’s coming…and to keep it at bay a little longer. There was no worry that she’d be listening in on my musings, especially as she’d accomplished her goal of bringing Azriel to my door already. Round one was hers.

It was the remainder of the bout that had me anxious and troubled.

“Why show your hand now, sister mine, after all this time?”

What was she really after?

Could this whole scheme have been just a test, like a bugbear rattling its cage, looking for weaknesses in the bars and hinges? Had she played with my fate as a means to merely test the strength of the shackles that still bound her?

That thought brought up a whole new conundrum that had been wiggling around in my head since I’d first felt the mate bond click into place: if my twin was behind my new circumstance—and I had no doubt that she was—that could only mean Stryga’s power was waxing, rather than waning. If that was the case, it seemed Phaedra’s spellcraft, which had been the strongest this world has ever known, was finally after twenty millennia beginning to fade around the edges.

In truth, I’d known those magical chains were crumbling for some time, but hadn’t wanted to face that awful fact. Admitting it meant I’d have to deal with it, and I’d become far too comfortable and complacent in my ‘captivity’ to be bothered.

 _“Foolish_ ,” my shadows taunted. “ _Unlike you.”_

Blood and bones, but they were right. Usually, I paid sharper attention to the machinations of the world beyond my walls, listening to the earth and the wind, using the shadows to peer and peek for me, gathering what I could from my occasional visitors. On rare occasions, I’d even used the power of the black diamonds hidden within my walls to Gaze upon the current secrets of the seven Courts or the mortal lands.

I’d _felt_ The Weaver rousing ever since Rhysand’s mother, Aislinn, had first visited my sister in her forest. Something about that meeting had changed my sibling in a way I still could not fathom, but I’d felt its reverberation through the rock and the soil around me. It had shaken me to my bones…and yet, I’d done nothing, even knowing how dangerous a prospect it was that Stryga might be clawing her way to freedom.

And then there was my brother, Koschei, called The Sorcerer. He’d rediscovered his control of fire around that same time; I’d felt the warmth of it in the air, even across the swell of ocean and the shield of mountain. When the wind whispered to me the secret that he’d also begun teaching the Mortal Queens magick in exchange for physical comforts and goods during Amarantha’s reign, I’d known his strength was returning by leaps and bounds. Still, I’d ignored it.

There were other examples as well, monsters my mate had locked down tight both before and after she’d tricked my siblings and me. Bryaxis of the Swarm, the Wraith, Scylla, the Devil Asag, even that silver-eyed Angel of Retribution hiding within Rhysand’s inner circle—all had been stirring. Yet what had I done in response?

Absolutely nothing.

As I took a good look now in my mind’s eye, the picture became clear at long last: something or some _one_ was toying with me, distracting me. Too many things had been happening around me for the last five-hundred years, and most especially since Amarantha had risen to power five decades ago, and yet I’d blithely ignored most of it or written it off as inconsequential.

I was being lulled by magick—had to be. First, they’d used it to fog my senses, and now they’d taken the game further by weakening the hold Phaedra’s spells had on my siblings and on the other monsters, all of whom held a rather fantastic grudge against me.

But to what end, and who would know such a thing?

The answer came to me in a flash: Hybern’s King.

Who else but the ancestor of Malphas, my former Spy Master, would understand how to play me so well, after all?

Born during the middle of the Second Age to ‘pure-blood’ High Fae and skilled in espionage in such bounty as to make Azriel’s gift for it seem pale in comparison, Malphas had gone up quickly within the ranks of my Court. He’d been my most trusted advisor for millennia. So expert was he at fooling others as to his real feelings and intentions that too late, I’d learned how deeply he’d despised me and all those like me…those of us who were ‘other’.

After the Great Cataclysm that hailed the end of the Second Age, my mate, Phaedra had locked away we Void-walkers, the world’s true monsters, in various prisons around the world. Malphas had made his move only once my prison doors had been shut behind me; he’d taken a contingent of loyalists, including his mate and children, from my ruined Court and conquered a large section of land to the west that had survived being drowned when the continent beneath it had sunk under the ocean. Renaming the island, ‘Hybern’, he’d then gone about enslaving the hybrid Fae and humans who had escaped to that high ground during the world’s remaking and built his kingdom upon the backs of their labor, using whips and torture to achieve his aim. He’d taken the evil he’d done at my Court and brought it to his own, turning it into a place of rigid soldiering and fear.

A thousand years later, after he’d well-established his Empire in the west, he’d come to The Prison to brag of his duplicity and achievements. He’d given quite the monologue, as I recalled; gloating over his trickery of me and promising to one day eradicate the world of the ‘tainted ones’, those who had been born from the couplings between Void-monster and Fae—specifically, my children and their offspring. He’d called them ‘unnatural abominations’ and cursed their existence, and swore he and his whole line would see to the effort of wiping them all out, no matter how long it took.

Then, he’d opened his reckless mouth and added unforgivable insult to injury…

_“I have heard your mate has taken another, my King. A human. Mortal. Impure filth. It would seem your love ruins everyone it touches.”_

I ate him for dinner that night.

The only trophy I’d kept from that kill was the scimitar he’d been wearing on his hip when he’d stepped into my room. It still hung on the wall on pegs made from the male’s finger bones.

The earth and wind had told me over the last few centuries that his great-many-times-over-grandson, the current King of Hybern, was as sadistic as his ancestor had been. Apparently, he was just as powerful as well, for somehow he’d found a way to use Phaedra’s hold on we ‘monsters’ to make us turn a blind eye to his plans for global domination. Then, to sweeten the pot, he’d loosened the chains that held us down as well, giving us free reign to turn on each other once we worked our ways free.

Why? What was his end game in risking such an unleashing of strength into the world?

The answer came to me once again in a blinding flash of insight: bringing down the Wall was a distraction. He was going to use the Cauldron to do something even more terrible, something that would make the cracking of the world that my siblings and I had caused at the end of the Second Age, the Great Cataclysm, seem like child’s play.

But what?

I needed to find that out if I was to save what remained of my legacy…if I was to save Azriel and his dreams of a better world.

I sat up, glancing at my dwindling supplies around the room.

More bones were needed.

I called the Wraith to me, and together we decided which prisoner above to kill next.

 

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**  

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s Notes:
> 
> Ahhhh, so now you know the name I’ve given The Bone Carver for this fic: Kharon (said “Care-Ron”, spelled ‘Χάρων’ in Greek, also spelled ‘Charon’ in English). He’s named for the Ferryman of Hades in Greek mythology who carries the souls of the newly dead over the rivers Styx and Acheron (obviously Maas has a thing for Greek myth references, so I unashamedly borrowed the idea, too). In the ancient Greek tales, you have to pay Kharon for his services (an idea that Maas mirrors in the novel canon regarding visitors paying The Bone Carver for his ‘services’ – e.g. information and hiring him on as a soldier-mercenary).
> 
> FYI: Phaedra is also from Greek myth (said ‘Fae-dra’, spelled ‘Φαίδρα’ in Ancient Greek). She is the second wife of the most famous Greek hero, King Theseus, daughter of King Minos (King of Crete and creator of the Labyrinth where the Minotaur lived), and sister of Ariadne (who was the wife of the god, Dionysus). There are 4 different versions of Phaedra’s story, none of which end the same for her (they are, in some cases, wildly different endings), but the one that I thought best fit was the one where she married Theseus out of duty to cement the alliance between her father’s kingdom and Theseus. She loved and respected her husband, but she wasn’t in love with him (not as he was for her, anyway). After moving to Theseus’ court, she met and accidentally fell in love with his eldest son, Hippolytus (who had been born as the result of a passionate one-off with the Amazon Queen, Hippolyta, two decades earlier).
> 
> I used other mythology to create new monsters in this universe for this fic, too (e.g. Scylla, the Devil Asag).


	7. Fire & Ice

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The first part of this chapter takes place during Starfall night (Chapter 44, “A Court of Mist and Fury”). Azriel stayed around with Morrigan and Cassian to dance for a while, but then Feyre loses sight of them, saying that everyone went home while she and Rhysand slow danced until dawn. We don’t know where Azriel went during that time, so I used that information to set up this scenario.
> 
> The second part of this chapter takes place in Chapter 45 of ACOMAF. Azriel again splits off from everyone else to go check on his spies in other courts and to see if his spies for the Mortal Queen courts have gotten in or not, yet. He also stops to talk to Feyre’s sisters to see if Nesta or Elain have heard anything from the Mortal Queens. Feyre is off training with Rhys in the woods near the Illyrian camp. Again, I used that absence of Azriel’s whereabouts during that time to set up the second half of this chapter’s scenario.

 

.

**~.~.~.~.~**

" _ **Truth Teller shook in my hand, and the shadows around me cried out. 'The High Lord of Wings is dead!' they wailed, and I knew it was for Azriel that they all grieved."**_

_**~ from "The Carver's Legacy", excerpt by Elain Archeron** _

**~.~.~.~.~**

.

I felt the stars falling far above my head, felt their silent, fierce plummet through the Void and the warmth their dying bodies carried on the breeze as they turned to phosphorescent green ash before meeting earth.

Most of them, anyway.

A few of them were Void-walkers, such as I had been, crossing over this slow-turning planet at blinding speeds on their way towards another destination. They did not plunge to their demise, but rather streaked across the sky, stepping past us and onward. Their movement could only be seen on this night, when the spaces between worlds were thinnest and Void rifts opened up in random places.

My siblings and I had told the High Fae long ago that these strange lights were spirits on a vast migration towards the afterlife, for those primitive faeries saw us as gods, and we did not want to break that illusion. As far as I knew, that story persisted among the Night Court's residents.

"Starfall!" the Wraith called out through The Prison, whisking down corridors as fast as a summer breeze to announce the sacred time to those of us remaining. "Starfall begins!"

Every year it was the same. I never knew how my co-conspirator divined this date correctly, as there were no windows to the outside world in our fortified bastille, but this annual nighttime prediction always came on the same date, like clockwork. It really was one of the few ways I could mark the particular day of the year; the screams of the dying above simply were not predictable enough to do so any longer, now that the herd of prisoners had thinned out.

The 'Living Shade' appeared at my doors on a gust of wind, hovering on the other side and whispering through them his news to me, as if I hadn't heard him. At the same time, he begged my shadows to come play with him again. Feeling generous on such an auspicious occasion, I granted him his request and set my eldritch shadows free. Their tether remained in my hands, but I allowed them this temporary amusement.

When they left together, zooming off through the corridors with childish glee, I set aside my carvings for the night, deciding to let my work be for the time.

As of tonight, it had been thirty-thousand, three-hundred and three years since my own fall into this world.

Three threes. An ominous number, my sister might have said from her days divining.

I snorted at the thought. If only someone had told her, Koschei, and I such a thing before we'd collectively bent to investigate the odd, glowing fissure that had suddenly appeared at the bottom of that one cavern... The three of us falling into this world had been nothing short of a calamity, so perhaps Stryga would be right in proclaiming it a dooming number after all.

"Do you think so, my Black Diamond?" I turned my head and whispered into the earth. "Is three an ill-fated number?"

Leaning back onto the inset stone ledge that served as my bed, I closed my eyes and let my body go lax. Stretching out my senses, I listened to the wind as Starfall marked the turning of the season. This would be my last time enjoying this event…and I would be alone for it.

I don't know how long I lay there seeped in self-pity, feeling the stars fall and wishing I could view them for real. Sometime around the three o'clock hour, however, I felt a shift in the breeze, and I heard the doors far above flung open as someone came through them with haste.

I smelled  _him_  long before he appeared; his leathers, his sweat, the crisp wind that clung to his wings were an aphrodisiac to my starved senses.

Azriel had come after all.

Abruptly rising, I turned towards the doors to my cell and bade them open with a thought and a small push of magick. Against my sides, my hands shook, and under my ribs, my heart leaped.

I stood and faced my fate.

When my body shifted once more into that of the beautiful Morrigan, I felt the poisoned fangs of jealousy slice through me, knowing the warrior-princess was still my mate's greatest wish. Still, I glanced down at the white, sleeveless dress that curled around this form and clung to its generous curves, and couldn't help but think the Morrigan's fashion sense was, at least, unparalleled. If I were female, this is the dress I would wear to an elegant affair—or to entice a lover. The costume was mostly diaphanous, but heavily beaded with white gemstones and sequins; it gave off the gentle luminescence of starlight as I moved. A daring slit up the side bared one whole leg to the hip. Silver heeled sandals, made of the softest leather adorned my feet and added some extra height to my tall frame.

Before I could wonder further about my appearance, Azriel was striding through my door…and he kept coming at me like a male who would not be denied.

As soon as he cleared the doors, his wings flared wide, stretching nearly the entire length of my cell, and that rumbling purr escaped his chest to fill the room with its hypnotic sound. It was the sound of a male in heat who had found a match.

After weeks of internal debate, of frustration and the need for resolution, I decided to simply surrender to the arousal that burned through me. What I felt I would not fight, regardless of the body I wore or how it was clothed or that it was responsible for Azriel's interest, as my time in this world was short, and I had gone too long without knowing another's touch. I could not endure the emptiness any longer.

Like Rhysand, I wanted to hold onto my dream, too, even if only for a little while.

I let Azriel rush me and encircle me in his strong, warm embrace. I fell into him without resistance, winding my arms around his neck, surrendering to the mate bond that had held me in its sway since the moment Stryga had cast her spell upon my life's string and tied me to this magnificent male. I let his scarred hands grip the back of my hair to tilt my head and hold me still. I let him bend me to his need.

Our mouths met, melded and it was heat and pleasure, fiery death. I quickly grew dizzy and lightheaded.

I wanted him to know what this was like, to know how easily a mate could destroy one's senses. I suggestively stroked his wings with my nails and stole his breath with a ravishing kiss. His body quivered in my arms and he groaned with pleasure at my feathery touches against the thin membranes stretching forwards, silently begging me for more. He lifted me, pushed me back against the wall, where the bone was smooth and cold and brought me into intimate contact with the solid length of him through his leathers.

With trembling hands, I reached between us to release him from his confines, to take him into my palm and hold him as I'd wanted to for weeks. He was thick and long, and throbbing in my small grip. I gently squeezed around him and with a deep, masculine grunt he thrust through the tunnel of my fingers, all silken heat with an iron core.

Inflamed by his taste and his scent in my nose and his slick, hard prick in my hand, I jerked him until he was coming against my bare thigh in hot spurts. His tongue swept over the pulse at my throat as his pleasure-filled groan vibrated through my skin, and then he was possessively biting down on the flesh and pushing the skirt of my dress aside to slide his elegant, strong fingers through my wet, sensitive core. With a growl, he thrust two into me and fucked me with them, ruthlessly but with skill. My hands curled against his chest, the nails digging into the soft, blue shirt he had worn for the festivities. It matched the small, sapphire stud winking at me from his earlobe. I licked it, sucked it between my lips, and rode his hand to climax.

I'd never had sex as a female. It was different, frightening and exciting all at once. The sensations of climax were less intense than a male's, but the tremors and the rippling sensations kept coming until I was seeing stars…until I was incandescence itself, a fallen creature diving into an improbable heaven.

I whimpered, shook, and gasped my lover's name.

 _My mate,_  I cried down the bond that connected me to him.

There was no response. Instead, his cock took the place of his hand, sliding into me with a practiced ease, and just from that I was suddenly coming again, harder and more intensely than the moment before. I cried out and tossed my head back as he thrust deep, filling and stretching me until my hips ached and my eyes watered and every breath was an effort. The muscles of his arms bulged with strength as he easily held me up and pinned me in place, even while his powerful hips drove relentlessly against mine below.

Looking down, he watched as he sunk into me over and over, his expression a mask of concentration, ecstasy, and awe.

I pleaded in his ear for more— _faster, deeper, harder_.

He gave me everything.

As I came apart for him a third time, my head spinning from the pleasure, all I could feel was the heavy weight of him deep inside me, merging us together again and again until I wasn't sure where he ended and I began.

His thrusts grew frantic then, and his wings flared wide, and I knew he was close to his own ending.

Sweat poured down the side of his face, dripping onto my cheek and into the crack of my lips. I licked it away, clamped my thighs more tightly around his hips, grabbed a hunk of his hair and yanked his head to the side, and bit his throat as he had mine.

He came with a roar, and I clung to him as the only anchor in a storm-tossed sea of emotion.

When it was over, my body was slick with sweat and other things, and my legs shook as hard as my heart. Azriel gently set me back on my feet, and when I would have slid to the floor, he captured me and safely sat me on the edge of the stone ledge where I usually slept. Then, he stepped away and hastily turned his back on me, righting his clothing, recalling his shadows to his side from where he'd banished them.

With a groan at the ache in my whole body, I lay back on the ledge, not bothering to cover up. Why should I? He'd be gone again in a minute, and with him, my body and clothing would return to normal. It would be as if none of this night had happened, with only memory to serve as proof otherwise.

I closed my eyes and sighed, too tired to feel that rejection right now.

"Did I hurt you?" he softly asked as an awkward silence settled between us once more.

I could feel the euphoric high fading and the return of my usual cynicism.

Had he hurt me?

I wanted to admit that he had, but in ways that went beyond the physical, yet I knew that would be an ill-advised move, as it seemed Azriel truly was unaware of the mate bond between us; it was clearly one-sided, as my sister had so nefariously planned. And with his explosive temper, despite how carefully repressed it was by his clever mix of magical siphons, I didn't think he'd appreciate knowing he was even remotely soul-connected to a creature like me.

No good would come of admitting to my new lover—and to the entire prison population, whom I knew was listening intently to this illicit liaison even then—that the shadowsinger held any sort of power over me, including that which could harm me.

I turned my head and stared at the back of him. His dark hair was ruffled from my hands, his wings drooped lazily with satiation, and the bite I had left at his throat was covered by his collar, but I knew it was there. I took pride in having marked him and in having had him as wildly as he'd had me, in knowing I'd broken through that icy calm he was so famous for exhibiting to unleash the savage male within.

Perhaps the power thing went both ways…

"You did only as I wanted you to," I stated with some small arrogance and left it at that.

My reply seemed to surprise him, as if he hadn't expected me to sound so cold-hearted, but then he simply nodded once and strode out of my domain without a backward look, heading home to Velaris to sleep off the fuck of his life.

I didn't move, waiting for my body to shift back to normal. When it did, I slapped a hand over my eyes and sighed.

Loving Azriel would be the death of me. Literally.

 

* * *

 

A few days later, he returned.

He stormed through my doors, letting his shadows shove them open, and rolled into my cell like an angry, black cloud ready to unleash a tempest.

I stood, meeting him head-on, fists clenched at my sides.

"I will not so easily submit again, Shadowsinger," I warned him, and sent my shadows at his to give him a challenge. He countered as I'd expected, and his friends met mine in the middle of the room, shrieking as they smashed into each other and grappled for supremacy, their strength fueled by our wills. Mine was clearly the older, more powerful forces of the two, but this was not meant to be a battle to the death, simply a game of mating dominance. I cautioned my eldritch friends to be more careful as they sliced up several inky shapes.

"Why?" he demanded of me, concentrating on the fighting before us. It was not going well for him, despite his clever attempt to draw my shadows closer towards the single lit torch in his hand.

I laughed, and it was a brittle sound. "The first time was a gift to us both. Now, you must prove you are worthy to fuck me again."

His hazel eyes glanced away from the fight towards me, and in those green-gold depths, I saw a cunning I hadn't expected.

"Fine," he said and threw the torch down, plunging us into the abysmal black.

Our shadows abruptly stopped fighting; their agitation had been snuffed as assuredly as the loss of light, replaced with curiosity and well-honed caution. I laughed again, this time in joy, and clapped at Azriel's ingenious solution.

"Bravo! You are indeed a male after my own heart, Illyrian!"

His warm body was suddenly pressing against my own, as he winnowed right in front of me. "Good," he whispered and claimed my mouth as his prize.

It was not a gentle kiss, and I knew it was meant to both punish and inflame me. I took his chastisement and his encouragement with a moan of surrender.

His beautiful, scarred hands reached around me to unbutton the thin, teal-coloured dress he'd put me in. When he'd freed the last button, he slid the straps off my shoulders and pushed the filmy, silken fabric to the floor until the Morrigan's voluptuous body was bared for his pleasure. He could not see as well as I could in such stygian darkness, but there was nothing wrong with his tactile senses or his imagination. He ran his fingertips over my hot, tingling skin, starting at my throat and moving downward, and that rumbling, masculine purr escaped his mouth as he learned the smoothness of my skin.

"I'm going to lick every inch of you," he promised in a soft, dark whisper. Then his wings flared and curved around me, providing a warm, safe cradle for my body as he bent his head and sucked at my breasts. His tongue rasped across them, one at a time, eliciting whimpers from between my lips. When he gently nipped at the taut buds with his teeth, my vision went white. The need within grew until its fire consumed me. I bowed my back and thrust my lower body against his. My aching core met the thick ridge of his arousal tucked behind his leathers and I rode it, shuddering with pleasure.

"Azriel, please!" I begged in a low, husky voice, uncaring of how wanton I sounded. I needed to feel him inside me again more than I needed my next breath.

He swore on a long exhale, and before I could blink, his wings were pulled back and he was on his knees before me, his head buried between my thighs. His talented tongue was velvet magic, licking my tender, wet flesh until my legs were shaking and I was crying out for him, climaxing against his face.

He didn't stop licking and tasting me even when I came down from the high. He seemed determined to drive me over the edge again. I'd never felt such ecstasy as when he sucked the small nub of flesh at the apex of my slit while slowly thrusting his fingers deep into me.

Despite all my long years of debauchery and excess as a younger male, despite the hundreds of partners I'd had over the millennia, despite having been mated once before, I'd never known this kind of sex. I'd only ever enjoyed the act with a male's body and his single-minded drive for personal fulfillment. As a female, I felt everything, and it was  _breathtaking._

My body transcended a second time and only then did Azriel grant me what I greatly desired.

Clothes half-undone again, he dragged me down to where he knelt and pulled me over his lap. His cock found my core as if we were instinctually meant to come together, and I readily fell upon him even as he wrapped his wings around us and started fucking me.

Arms like steel bands held me tight to him as his hips drove up into me, and every thrust was as deep as it could get and as hard and fierce as both our hidden tempers. Wet flesh met in a series of loud slaps as we chaotically came together, driven by an all-consuming need that neither of us seemed to want to deny. I scratched him, bit him, drove him until I was sure his heart would give out, and when I came, I screamed his name to the sky. He emptied into me at the same time, holding me still as he released his seed deep into my body.

Exhausted in the aftermath, I lay limply within his embrace, sweaty and sated. I glimpsed into the corners to find our shadows, both his and mine, similarly entwined. Apparently, they'd taken their cue from their masters.

The warm glow only lasted moments, however, before he was lifting me off him and setting us right. He left me much as he had the first time, assuring I was set upon the bench, turning his back on me as he adjusted his clothing, recalling his shadows to his side. When he headed for the door without a word, I was stung by such callousness.

"You forgot my tribute," I snarled at him, not enjoying these feelings of vulnerability he'd stirred to the surface.

He stopped at the door, and despite the lack of light, I saw him turn. "Am I to compensate you now for this service, too?" he asked, his tone devoid of all emotion.

I flinched at such a cold dismissal and turned my back on him, rolling towards the wall, but I was angry and I let him know it. "Don't you know, Azriel, when you use something you always pay for it? Or hadn't you learned that lesson by now, whelp?"

He fired back, "If that was so, Carver, then we would both be the richest males on the planet."

He walked out without another word.

I slammed the doors shut behind him.

**.**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**.**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's End Notes: 
> 
> Here are pics of what I envision the white dress looks like (and what the Bone Carver looks as Morrigan, too):  
> Front - https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/rzzmg/33309824/146498/146498_original.jpg  
> Back - https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/rzzmg/33309824/146892/146892_original.jpg
> 
> Remember in chapter 50 of ACOMAF, Morrigan says that Azriel wouldn’t make a move on her even if she stripped off all her clothes in front of him, because Azriel feels he’s a worthless bastard and not good enough for any female. Well, Azriel’s also pegged by her as being the calm and emotionally distant one, and by Rhys as being the one who tortures without his conscience getting in the way, and by Cas as being steady and in control always of his emotions. But then Az does things in novel canon that totally act counter to those characterizations of him (re: he loses his cool and tries to kill Helion, he shows remorse for things he’s done, he gets drunk, dances, and has secret lovers, he is gentle with Elain in front of others, etc.). That tells me we really don’t know the real Azriel, as he has many layers and multiple masks that he wears. Also, in canon Azriel seems to evolve over time into being more and more demonstrative of his feelings, more willing to risk himself, and less calm as the series moves on. This shift in him is never really explained by Maas…so I’ve capitalized on all of that for this fic.


	8. Monsters Within

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter again takes place in Chapter 45 of ACOMAF, one day after chapter 7.
> 
> I am taking advantage of Maas’ novel canon references to Earth (where Amren derives) and saying in this chapter that others from Earth have also crossed over the Void at various times.
> 
> Angstloch = From the Latin ‘angustus’ meaning ‘lost’ and German ‘loch’ meaning ‘hole’, this is the equivalent of an ‘oubliette’ (from the French ‘oublier’, which means ‘to forget’), which is a hole deep in the ground with only a single trap door entrance in its ceiling. Prisoners were often tossed in and locked away, left to either starve to death in the dark, die from the damp and chill, or be eaten by the rats that often could be found living in such places under castles. 
> 
> Gaoler = Archaic British spelling for ‘jailer’.

* * *

 

.

**~.~.~.~.~**

**_“I’ll give you the secret of escaping this place,” he’d offered. “In return, when I call upon you for a favour, you will grant it, without exception.’_ **

**_I’d agreed to the Bone Carver’s bargain, of course. I was a creature of light, and I’d have promised anything to get out of the Prison, to be free of the eternal darkness that had become my living Hell.”_ **

**_~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Amren_ **

**~.~.~.~.~**

.

 

Azriel returned the next day.

With a wave of my hand and an expulsion of some magic, I lit the torches in their sconces on the wall near the doors and sat up on the edge of my bench, waiting for him. I felt every step of his approach, and yet I did not open my doors to him as he drew near.

Undeterred by my obvious rejection, he pounded upon them with a closed fist, a booming trilogy of knocks that vibrated the walls and set the bones around me to rattling.

“I’m not in the mood for you today, shadowsinger,” I told him with some resentment, knowing he could hear me through the gaps in the metal doors. “In fact, I’ve decided I don’t want you again. Not like that, anyway.”

 _Liar, liar,_ my shadows whispered to me.

I threw them a warning glance and they went still and silent again.

Turning back to my guest, I demanded, “Just go home and leave me be.”

From the other side of the sealed portal, Azriel growled at my suggestion like a feral black leopard, warning me not to try his patience. His fist connected with the door again as he demanded entrance.

“If it’s more of my story you want, you can’t have it today. I’m tired. Come back tomorrow.”

His snarl this time was definitely a refusal to be denied. He wanted in _now_.

I sighed, recognizing on the slight breeze that pushed down the corridor past him and into my room through the gaps the spicy, masculine scent of an Illyrian warrior seeking to breed. His pheromones saturated the air to tempt me, and behind the door, I could hear his wings spread as far as the corridor allowed, flapping in growing irritation. He beat at the metal doors again.

Clearly, he was not going to be convinced to leave off so easily, nor anytime soon.

It was no secret that the males of his race spent so much time rigorously training, disciplining their berserker-like rages and honing that edge to make them the deadliest fighting force on the planet that when it came to coupling, they were equally as combative and ravenous. When the desire to beget heirs overtook them, however, their aggression reached new heights of insanity. Possessiveness, forcefulness, scratching, biting, and an insatiable need to mate to the point of utter exhaustion were the tamest of their behaviors during such times.

Usually, Azriel was the calm one of Rhysand’s companions, the one in rigid control of his emotions at all time. However, since the day I’d foolishly flirted with him and he’d looked down into the face of his Morrigan and saw in her gold-brown eyes a lust mirroring his own for the first time in five-hundred years, something in him had begun to fray. During the long night of Starfall, it had finally, irrevocably snapped loose. Perhaps it had been the white dress I’d so admired that had pushed him over the edge; I was betting his Morrigan had been wearing the same design that night, and he’d desired her so strongly then that he’d been driven by some deeply-seated self-preservation instinct to come to me for relief, knowing he could force me to resemble her, right down to the polish upon her fingernails.

And now he thought he could actually breed her too, by copulating with her replacement.

Idiot.

“You said it yourself, I am not _her_ ,” I cruelly reminded him. I looked down at the feminine wrists and hands I was now sporting and grimaced, for the first time truly resentful of this form. “I am the Bone Carver, the High Lord of Wings and of Ruin. I am Void-walker and Death’s loyal knight. I am not of the High Fae, not the daughter of Keir the Malign—not the female you’ve been pining after for the better part of five-hundred years! Go claim and fuck the real Morrigan, if you desire her so much!”

Behind the doors, Azriel snapped his teeth. His fists pounded upon the eight-inch thick doors in frustration.

I wanted to throw something at him. Stubborn, stupid little boy!

“By the Mother, don’t you have more important things to do—like breach a mortal queen’s court and steal her secrets? Where are your priorities? Why are you bothering me?”

Shadows began climbing through the cracks under and around the metal gate, seeking a way to open the doors when I’d earlier sealed them against intruders.

“You are insufferable!” I barked and threw my hands in the air. “What part of ‘I am not here for your use, you dimwitted Illyrian’ didn’t you understand?” I waved at the shadows that sought for a handle or a means to open the doors from my side. “And you’re wasting your time anyway. The doors aren’t locked in the traditional sense. They are spelled shut at my command. You’re not opening them.”

Tenacious to the core, Azriel sent his shadows slithering across the floor to seduce mine instead. Obviously he’d learned the Night Court’s oldest proverb well: when force fails, try charm. Immediately, my shadows grew excited as his neared.

“You traitorous whores,” I snarled in accusation at them. “No, absolutely not!”

They whispered condemnation and seethed at me in displeasure.

I hissed back at them, baring my teeth.

Azriel’s shadows stopped and did not advance further, wary of that sound. Instead, they undulated in place like a waiting snake, purring at me and cajoling me into letting their master in.

“No,” I insisted, crossing my arms with finality and hushing the inner core of me that longed to give in to my mate in all things. “I will not be used and tossed aside by you again!”

I waited an indeterminable amount of time for him to grow weary of the stalemate and withdraw, but he did not, the obstinate fool. His shadows formed a semi-circle around me, offering enticements if I would allow them closer. I watched them for a while in silence, dissecting in my mind’s eye the magick that bound them to Azriel.

“You’re extraordinarily good at that,” I reluctantly complimented him as I watched him control his nebulous shadow friends with great skill. To bend the Fiends of the darkness to your will was one of the most difficult magicks in this world to master. It was because it was not an innate talent to the Fae, such as glamours and transfiguration were, but derived from the Void-walkers. From my people, in fact—from me, to be more specific. I was the last living shadowsinger of the Osedax, and I had passed that ability on to my offspring. That was, undoubtedly, where Azriel had acquired his gift. He’d honed it as a child, however, while locked away inside a dark cell by his venomous step-mother, or so my shadows informed me. “Your control of the Fiends is the best I’ve seen from one of the Fae.”

I wondered if the current king of Hybern had ever learned that same skill from his ancestor, my former Spy Master. It would certainly explain how he’d so quickly found the pieces of the Cauldron within the three temples, and how he knew so much of Prythian’s strength these last thousand years. I knew Amarantha certainly hadn’t told him; she’d betrayed her master the moment she’d ignored his orders to fight Jurian to the death, and had held no love in her traitorous heart for the man who had once been her captain.

So busy was I contemplating the issue that I didn’t realise I’d loosened my hold on my own shadows. Pleasure-seeking at heart, they moved quickly to approach Azriel’s Fiends, and within seconds had entwined with them. Their sounds of pleasure echoed through my chamber, snapping me out of my musings.

“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted at them in exasperation. “You rotten slags! I ought to-”

Right at that moment, the Wraith began screaming somewhere above me, and it was a sound of terror, not play.

It repeated a second later, the pitch even higher this time, and I knew this wasn’t a lark.

Someone had gotten out of their cell, someone with the ability to grab hold of a Wraith. Someone whose door I had earlier left open for another purpose…

Without thought, I opened my cell doors and rushed through them to run to my oldest friend’s rescue…and barreled straight into Azriel’s arms. Like bands of steel, they locked around me, preventing me from physically pushing past him. “Let me go!” I snarled at my lover and dug my nails into his arms, drawing blood in my desperation to get away. This was no time for an Illyrian courtship display of strength! “He’s the weakest of us. She’ll kill him!”

Azriel seemed confused, but right then, the Wraith screamed a third time and in a show of trust, my mate let me go.

I ran up the long slope that was the sole corridor to my cell, sending my shadows streaming ahead to warn me of other possible dangers ahead. One never knew in the Prison what to expect.

Two levels above, I found the escaped Rakshasi attempting to devour my Wraith, who was screeching and trying desperately to get away. Usually, the Wraith could dematerialize at will, however Rakshasi hands were tipped with poisoned claws that weakened any creature. A single touch was all it took, and no matter the monster’s size or material, it was made inert. In all my years, I’d never known any being to be immune to it, even one as ethereal as the Wraith.

That particular poison was, in fact, the very method Phaedra had used to trap every monster she’d ever bound, including my siblings, the prisoners here, and me.

There was only one course open to me if I wanted to save my friend, though doing so would cost me precious energy, access to those poisoned hands if ever I’d had need, and another few of my secrets. It was worth the risk, however. I had very few friends left in this world, and the Wraith had been with me for fifteen thousand years. In truth, he’d kept me sane, kept me from ending my life by my own hand long ago. I owed him, and I was ever a male who paid his debts and kept his promises.

Decision made, I moved at my ‘normal’ speed, passing through space in a quick blink of time and closing the distance between myself and my enemy. When I was in the Rakshasi’s face, I opened my mouth and breathed my Death magick upon her.

It was over before she could even react to counter me.

The Rakshasi instantly released the Wraith, clawing at her face as Death claimed her, cell by cell. She fell to her knees and then to her side, howling in pain and terror as all the liquid in her body was suddenly evaporated, sucked out of her by an invisible god's power. Within moments, she’d withered into a naked husk at my feet, her limbs twisting and curling in on themselves, her hair becoming straw-like and brittle, her eyes blackened and bulging from their sockets. Her tongue was the last thing to move, a long, red strip of meat that slipped from her mouth attempting to lap up any moisture from the air to counter her body’s desiccation. When it finally went limp and then fractured apart like old wood suffering dry rot, I knew she was well and truly dead. A few moments after that, not even a body remained; a pile of dust was all there was left to mark where she’d lain. Even her inner spark had been consumed by the spell. There would be no soul to return to the Great Mother and the Cauldron, which meant no possibility of resurrection or reincarnation. The Rakshasi was gone forever; as if she had never been.

I could feel Azriel’s shock echo down our bond.

The vibration of the dark magick I’d unleashed moved through the Prison too, and from the few prisoners that remained who could speak the Common tongue, there came a chant of warding— _Death Knight, Death Knight, Death Knight._  

My legs shook. I’d expended more energy than I’d expected in rushing up here and phasing, and then in summoning Death to obey my will. I’d already been using up too much lately, in between poking at the mate bond, in transforming into others whenever visitors came around, in having sexual relations with Azriel, and in trying to locate the Cauldron’s precise location using earth and wind magick. This had knocked me back. I would need blood to recover.

The Wraith was babbling and sobbing at my elbow, staying close to my side and seeking the shelter of my shadows, its friends. They comforted him with platonic touches and soft whispers.

“Take us back,” I murmured to Azriel and fell to my knees, suddenly weakened beyond expectation.

He was there in a flash, scooping me up into his arms and carrying me back down to my cell. The Wraith came with us, too afraid to be out again for the moment.

“How-?” my mate asked me, but I interrupted, knowing what he really wanted to know.

“I didn’t expect you today, so I opened her door earlier. I didn’t know the Wraith was playing on this level.”

We entered my lair and Azriel sat with me in his lap on my sleeping bench. I leaned my head against his solid shoulder and sighed. The questions were coming, I knew. I only needed to be patient.

“Why did you open its door?” he finally asked.

“'Her', not 'it'.  _She_ was Rakshasi. A Void-walker from the same world as your Amren. And I told you, I’m not immortal. That means I have to eat on occasion.”

His spine stiffened. “Eat?” I could feel the gears turn over in his head, and watched his expression as he abruptly realised the Prison had been getting quieter each century. “You’ve been killing off the other inmates for food.”

“No lectures.” I made a face. “Those who are prisoners here now were locked up and forgotten a long time ago, meant to wither and starve to death in the dark for their crimes. The old word for it was _angstloch_ , and it was punishment for the greatest of wicked-doers. So, believe me when I tell you these creatures deserve whatever they’re getting.”

I sniffed at that. Most of these monsters—primarily Void-walkers when the majority of the rifts had opened up at the end of the First Age, but a few evolved naturally upon this world—had been happy to terrorize and feast on the primitive Fae of that time. Only the combined Army of Wings had stood against them in the Second Age and stopped them in their tracks. If not for my siblings and I standing against those beasts, the Fae would have been wiped out…and with their demise, the humans they’d bred into existence would never have been made.

The monsters in here were reaping what they had sown. I felt no love for any of them, and no guilt about ending their lives, either, especially as it furthered my own.

-Well, all except the Wraith, who really shouldn’t have been stuck here in the first place. If not for Phaedra’s prejudice against all Void-walkers there at the end of our relationship, he wouldn’t be. He was probably the most innocent ‘criminal’ I’d ever encountered, truly.

“Can they free themselves?” he asked me.

I shook my head. No, I was the only one with the knowledge or power. I had, after all, built the Prison as a means of containing my Court’s ruin by locking up its worst offenders. Back then this had been its highest tower. Now, it was all that remained of that once great civilization, the rest swallowed up by the ocean. And I was its gaoler.

“How?”

Terse and to the point, that was my Azriel. I understood what he was asking, however: specifically, how had I gone about it without ending up on someone else’s plate after all this time. “I told you that when we were young, Osedax children tended the crops in the deeper caverns. I learned early on how to cultivate differing species of cave fungi and moss and lichen by feeding them to each other. It was a delicate balance, but in the end, the harvested crop yielded better nutrients. You can apply that same principle to livestock, too.”

He considered that. “You arranged for the other prisoners to kill and eat each other so you could feast off of the strongest of them later, to sustain yourself.”

“Isn’t that the legacy of all mortal creatures? We are all of us murderers.” I gave a sinister chuckle, but it came out sounding more tired than evil. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, shadowsinger, but in the end, no matter how lovely the outward face you give me, I can only be what I am.”

“And what is that?”

“A survivor.”

Azriel was quiet for the longest time, and I’d assumed he was judging me, as so many others had done over the long years of my life. When I opened my tired eyes and looked up at him, it surprised me to find him looking me over, however, as if he was turning a puzzle over in his skull, rather than considered whether or not he should dump me and run.

“You can open the doors and leave this cell at will,” he pointed out and shifted me in his arms to allow me to lie against him more fully. “None of the others can do that.”

“Except the Wraith,” I reminded him and nodded to the corner, where my ghost-like companion hovered above the ground, silently watching us. My shadows surrounded him still, keeping him calm. “Technically, no cell can hold him.”

“Then why doesn’t he just leave?”

I shrugged. “He doesn’t want to.”

“And why don’t you just leave?”

I glanced up at him again. “Because I don’t want to.”

“Why not?”

I rolled my eyes. “Are you always the Spy Master, squeezing people for information?”

“Are you always so devious and ill-tempered?”

“Frequently,” I told him with a frown. “It comes with being confined with criminals and monsters for two whole Ages.” Slowly, I reached up and touched his chin. “What’s your excuse?”

To my surprise, his lips curled into a smile. “Rhysand, Feyre, Cassian, and Amren.”

I noticed he left out one glaringly important character, but wisely chose not to mention it.

“Oh, is that all?” I teased instead. “Yes, Feyre Cursebreaker is certainly a headache and a half, and her mate isn’t much better some days. Always so serious, those two. Your Illyrian general, well, I’m sure he’s fun at parties.”

“And Amren?”

Ah, the Angelus. Rhysand’s second in command. The Marshal Protector of Velaris. “What about her?”

He turned and met my eye. “She was here, too.”

“She was, yes.”

“Why did you let her go?”

“Who said I did?”

He merely looked at me.

I _tsked._ “Because like the Wraith, she was sentenced here not for her deeds, but out of prejudice for what she was: a Void-walker.” I weakly fiddled with the collar of his shirt. “It did not seem quite…fair.”

“You saved her life.”

“It wasn’t as heroic as you make it sound.” I thought of the promise I’d extracted from the angel before opening her door and setting her free, and realised it might be one of those debts I never collected. “She bargained with me for her freedom: a favour someday for a favour right away.”

Azriel was quiet again, and I leaned more fully against him, shivering. My body was growing colder. Not a good sign.

“You’re trembling,” my mate whispered as he leaned his face down towards me. “What’s wrong?”

I sighed, too exhausted to even reply. I wanted to ask him why he cared, why he was helping me at all, but before I could open my mouth, my eyes slipped closed and unconsciousness dragged me back into the familiar dark.

**.**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**.**

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rakshasi = A Rakshasa is a mythological being in Hindu mythology. Rakshasas are also called 'Maneaters'. A female rakshasa is known as a Rakshasi. Rakshasas were most often depicted as ugly, fierce-looking and enormous creatures, with two fangs protruding from the top of the mouth and having sharp, claw-like fingernails. In the world of the Ramayana and Mahabharata, Rakshasas were a populous race. There were both good and evil rakshasas, and as warriors they fought alongside the armies of both good and evil. They were powerful warriors, expert magicians and illusionists. As shape-changers, they could assume different physical forms. Some of the rakshasas were said to be man-eaters, and made their gleeful appearance when the slaughter on a battlefield was at its worst. 
> 
> I picked this creature to add to this fanfic as a Void-walker from Earth specifically because I found their shape-changing talents and the way they are described as being both good and evil, as well as how they gleefully slaughtered the enemy on the battlefield, to coincidentally mirror the Bone Carver's abilities and how Maas describes him in ACOWAR's final battle against Hybern.


	9. Inescapable Irony

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter again takes place in Chapter 45 of ACOMAF, half a day after chapter 8 of this fic.
> 
> *Just remember what Rhys said in ACOMAF regarding Illyrian males and their mating behaviour (chapters 55 & 56). 
> 
> Muninn is one of Odin’s ravens in Norse mythology. His name means, “Memory”.

.

**~.~.~.~.~**

**_“The Bone Carver. The Cleaver of Souls. The Scourge of the Fae. Reaper. Butcher. Slayer. Whatever. After seeing him in action, I just call him the High Lord of Death.”_ **

**_~ from “The Carver’s Legacy”, excerpt by Helion, High Lord of the Day Court_ **

**~.~.~.~.~**

.

I awoke feeling slightly feverish and desperately hungry. Sitting up on my elbows, I groaned, a bit lightheaded.

Azriel was suddenly in my face. “Don’t get up.”

He put gentle pressure on me to lie back down. Weakened, I didn’t have the strength to fight him, and so did as he wanted. Flat on my back on the stone ledge I usually used for a bed, I stared up at my mate, confused by his care. He fussed over me, tucking under my chin something made of soft cotton. I glanced at it, recognizing it as his shirt. He’d gone without to cover me up and keep me warm.

“Thought you’d be gone by now,” I murmured, watching him with a wary eye. He frowned at that, as if I was challenging his honour, so I tried explaining it a little better. “You have responsibilities to your Court. The Mortal Queens-”

“Are being watched,” he assured me.

My throat and mouth were as dry as a bone. It took me several swallows and a swipe of my tongue across my lips to wet them enough to speak clearly. “You did it. You got your spies in.” He nodded. I smiled. “Knew you could.”

I was so tired. I felt like I’d flown a thousand miles in an unfriendly wind.

“What do you need?”

Lifting my lids was work, but I managed it. “For what?”

Azriel gave me a once over. “To heal.”

It amused me that he’d even wondered such a thing.

“More than is right to ask.”

He simply stared at me again, those green-gold eyes of his telling me not to footsy around and that he was dead serious.

“Blood,” I told him. “I need blood.”

My mate seemed to consider that, his gaze turning towards the open doors. “How much?”

I sighed. “Lifetimes worth.”

I was fading fast. I could feel my consciousness barely holding on by a thread.

He put his hand on my forehead, checking my temperature. Whatever he’d felt, he clearly didn’t like. Personally, I was beginning not to care again as the darkness beckoned…

“Ask me,” he said and offered me his scarred wrist.

The veins under his skin pulsed hard, as if the idea of letting me drink from him was a terrifying prospect, but his hand was steady and his expression resolved.

I only had enough strength to open my mouth in a silent request for his help, my throat going tight at the thought of Azriel’s life-giving blood flowing into me. _Please,_ I thought down our bond. I knew he couldn’t hear me, but it was the best I could manage.

Azriel lowered his wrist to my lips. My Osedax fangs descended on their own, survival instinct kicking in, the curse I was under unable to prevent such a thing, despite the face of the Morrigan that I still wore.

I didn’t have the words to tell him to hold on, that it would hurt the same as a serpent’s strike. Hunger beat relentlessly at me now that I knew food was on its way, and all I could do was open my mouth and wait for him to come into range.

I tried to make it quick and as painless as possible, but Azriel still flinched as my teeth punctured his skin. I was cognizant enough not to hit an artery, but beyond that, nothing else mattered but the hot, salty taste of his blood racing across my tongue as I pulled my fangs free and then latched onto the wounds with my mouth.

The moans that escaped my throat in between swallows were blatantly sexual. I couldn’t control them. The taste of him was better than I could ever have imagined, and it recharged me as if I’d consumed a hundred piles of bone in a single sitting. My strength returned as my body jolted back to life with each swallow.

Smoky copper, a hint of dark spice…

_Azriel._

He renewed me in the way only a mate could, and ignited a fiery desire deep within me.

Thoughts of our last time together flashed through my mind’s eye. The memory of his thrusting body, of his wings stretched forward to cradle me, of his mouth licking me between my thighs…

A low, rumbling purr vibrated through the air and the scent of Azriel’s mating pheromones rolled over me, swamping my senses. Pleasure rose up like a great wave, sweeping aside all doubts and fears, leaving only intense need in its wake.

I whimpered and rubbed my thighs together as the heat curdled in my abdomen.

My mate’s wings flared, blotting out the light from the torches, and suddenly he was up and over me, bracing his sun-kissed body on one powerfully-muscled arm while I continued to feed from the other.

He looked down at me without the typical cockiness of a male seducing an eager female, only with cool assurance as to where things were headed. I was his, and he knew it.

“Pull the dress up,” he instructed.

I released my grip on his hand to do as he asked, keeping my mouth sealed to his wrist and my eyes locked on his. With a series of tugs, the green satiny skirt he’d put me in slid easily up and over my naked hips, baring long smooth legs…and the shiny evidence of my arousal upon the swollen, flushed lips of my pussy. Azriel looked down between us, glimpsed how ready I was for him and groaned with approval. His nostrils flared as he scented the perfume of my lust on the air.

“Take me out.”

With shaky hands, I did as he wanted, unleashing the buttons on his leathers and pulling them down as far as I could as each one came free. He was already erect, of course, as hard as I’d ever seen him. I took him in my hand and stroked him, my small fingers barely able to wrap around him.

How different this all was in a woman’s form. I felt both immensely powerful and at the same time, completely vulnerable in the arms of my bigger, stronger lover.

Above all, however, I knew I was desired by the sexiest male I’d ever laid eyes and hands upon…and because of that, it suddenly didn’t matter what form I’d taken tonight. I could have had purple skin and pink hair, been a water nymph, or existed as a being as ethereal as the Wraith, yet when my mate looked into my eyes he knew it was me underneath all the glamour.

He wanted _me_.

He groaned with pleasure and rolled his hips in time to my hand’s movements, and I watched in fascination as his eyes dilated, watched as he tossed his head back and begged me with his body for more. Sculpted perfection, I thought as I observed the play of his muscles as he moved above me. Every inch of him was hard iron encased in smooth skin, and his face…he truly was the most beautiful Illyrian male I’d ever seen, a flawless mix of Osedax and Fae.

 _Mine_ , I thought down the bond, knowing he couldn’t hear me, but staking my claim nonetheless.

He grunted as I tightened my fingers and my caresses grew bolder, but his pace never sped up. It remained a steady, torturous rhythm, a carefully measured pleasure. Clearly, he wanted all his seed inside me tonight, not upon my hand or spilled across my thighs.

My attention returned to where he was thrusting into the tunnel of my hand, now slick with his essence, and I was captivated by the sight of that long, heavy shaft with its broad, rosy head. I wanted to taste every inch of that hot flesh someday, wanted it pushing my lips apart and gliding in as deep as it could go, wanted that thick length thrusting into my mouth over and over, finally spurting its release across my tongue…

His rough, growly voice shook me from my fantasies.

“Spread your legs and put me in.”

With effort, I raised one leg up and out, opening myself to him. I fitted him to me, rubbing him in circles around the opening and delighting in the way that only served to make us both hungrier with anticipation.

“No more teasing,” he murmured, and with a slight push, he penetrated me an inch, then another.

I grabbed hold of his shoulder with one hand, while the other returned to holding his wrist to my mouth. Slowly, as I drank from him, he opened me back up, my slick heat easily welcoming every inch of his iron-hard flesh, my sheathe convulsing around him when he was at last seated to the hilt.

Locked deep within my cunt, Azriel held still. He waited there, throbbing, his balls pressing below, but he was still, as if this was what he’d really wanted all along, just the joining and the connection.

“Take as much as you need from me.”

I did, but for only a little longer, letting his gift fill me until my fingers and toes were warm once more, and then I swiped my tongue across the holes I’d made and used magick to seal them. The strength that flowed through me from Azriel’s blood was incredible. I felt mostly renewed, nectar-energized, and suddenly desperate to have him take me like we both wanted.

Wrapping my arms around his neck, I pulled his mouth to mine and kissed him hard. His lips attacked mine with an equal ferocity, with an untamed passion as the leash around his control snapped and he was freed.

He moved then, the heavy width of his erection stroking in and out of me with a possessive power, and I could do nothing but hold onto him and experience the ecstasy of my mate mating me again. His hips lunged and snapped against mine, nearly brutal in their intensity, burying his cock deeper with each forward surge, driving the fire within me higher.

I dug my nails into Azriel’s shoulders and slung my legs over his, arching to him, letting his rock-hard belly caress the swollen nub at the apex of my thighs. I imagined it was his tongue rasping the sensitive, throbbing little clit, suckling upon it and nipping gently. “Fuck me,” I begged, reckless and raw with hunger. Lust for my mate tormented me, but I embraced it. I let it devour me from the inside out…let it send whimpers and pleas tumbling from my lips like prayers.

He alternated his thrusts, circling his hips, shoving harder, and that sent me to the peak. Rather than tumbling off and falling straight into ruin, however, I flew straight into the sun on burning angel’s wings.

My body was slick with sweat, on fire from head to toe. I could barely breathe from the pleasure coursing through my veins. Everything was white and light, and I wondered if this was really what the divination stones had meant when they’d shown me my end and told me I’d die for Azriel…

Consumed by an insatiable, instinctual need, I raced the pleasure again and again, burning up like a phoenix, seeking death and rebirth in my lover’s arms. I cried out, twisting and writhing beneath my mate, a siren’s song drawn from my lips each time.

As I came for him a third time, Azriel’s wings finally sought their freedom, but as we were up against the wall on one side, only one was able to stretch out and surround us. It flapped in time to his tirelessly pounding hips, stirring the air, rattling the bones loosely set into my walls. They serenaded us, reminding us of the ever-looming truth of death...and of the majesty of life.

I pressed my mouth to his throat. “Come,” I bade.

He did with a roar, throwing his head back and shouting to the ceiling for the whole Prison to hear. My Illyrian male howled in triumph as he filled my body with all he had to give.

I lay underneath him, panting and dizzy, playing with his sweat-soaked hair as he lay it down upon my breast and came down from his high. His racing heart eventually matched mine, and then sleep began to pull at us both.

As we rested together, entangled and sated for the now, I realised how ironic it was that I'd fallen for an Illyrian Spy Master just months before my death…and what that really said about me.

**~.~.~**

I awoke sometime later on my side, cradled with my back to Azriel’s chest. He was silent as he slept on, his big chest steadily rising and falling. Clearly, he was exhausted from all the running back and forth between the Night Court and the mortal realms, not to mention coming here for me…

Why _had_ he come? Was it merely for a release or was there something more to it? From the possessive way he’d taken me and the way he held me now, I could almost believe that it more than physical.

But was he here for me, or for the Morrigan?

The changing in my breathing had, most likely, alerted him to my wakefulness, for a moment later he was awake too, and then he was nuzzling his nose against my throat and pressing his growing erection against me. The pleased hum he made as he ran his lips over my accelerating pulse was all male satisfaction.

I slid my leg up and over his, giving him permission to slip back inside me. With a roll of his hips and a pleasure-filled groan, he pushed into me one deliberate inch at a time. My swollen, wet sex flexed, the sensitive muscles rippling around him as he fed me his cock with agonizing deliberation. He took what I offered and gave me back pure ecstasy in return.

When he was into the hilt, he tore my dress to get to the hot, needy flesh beneath. Palming my breasts, he began kneading them. “Do you like this?” he asked, voice hoarse and low. He plucked my ripe nipples while remaining perfectly still within me. “Do you like what I do to you?”

I threw my head back against his chest, panting and arching into him, fucking myself on his rigid, thick flesh since he seemed content to torture me by refusing to truly feed my need. “You destroy me,” I admitted. Heat suffused my face, my body. I was burning up, every inch of me fever slick and desperately melting. “I never knew it could be this good.”

He bit my throat again and growled like a great cat, pleased by my response. His fingers teased my taut, little buds, flicking and pulling them until I was impaling my tight, eager cunt upon him with mad abandon. I moaned so loudly, I knew the entire Prison could hear me.

My cunning male only drove me higher then, slipping his fingers between my split thighs and trapping my leg under his to stop me from writhing upon him. I cried out as I was forced to halt…even as he teased the tender, smooth flesh with a butterfly’s caress, drawing flirtatious circles around the sensitive nub.

I was lost, sensations whipping through me as he tormented me with a hotter, brighter arousal than I’d ever known. I was practically sobbing for relief as he brought me to the edge, only to back off again and again.

He circled his hips and thrust once, only to stop. “You’re so wet,” he whispered in my ear as he drove me closer to that line between sanity and sweet bliss. “Always so wet and ready for me, aren’t you?”

I pressed my palms to the wall in front of me and felt my fingers curl in frustration, the nails digging into the stone. My head swam, my vision blurred. This feeling was unlike anything I’d ever known in all my years…

“I’m the only male you’re fucking, aren’t I?”

I nodded. “Yes…yes…only you,” I swore.

He nipped along the ridge of my pointed ear, licking the sensitive tip. Electric arcs of pleasure ripped through me, thrilling me to the edge once more. I screamed like a cat in heat. “Good,” he said, in supreme control. “Then you won’t deny me ever again.” He punctuated his command with a thrust of his hips that I felt all the way into my belly. “Will you?” he demanded.

I was so close to losing myself to him, but thirty millennia of sheer stubbornness made me stand my ground. “I am not your whore! You cannot command me‒”

In a quick move, he’d rolled me onto my belly. Pressing his hands to either side of my head, he lifted his weight off me until only his hips kept me pinned. “Never lock your doors to me,” he insisted and thrust deep, penetrating me not just in body, but in spirit. For all his strength, though, I noted he was careful not to hurt me. “I’ve given you my blood, you’ve taken my seed. You’re _mine.”_

I looked at him over my shoulder, holding onto that last bit of me while wearing the Morrigan’s lovely shell. “Only if you’re mine as well,” I stipulated. “Me, not _her._ ”

His hips jerked, his jaw clenched, and I could see he was fast losing himself to the mating imperative too. It didn’t help I was provoking him. I knew Azriel to normally be a creature of supreme control, but no Fae male could resist the need to breed with his chosen, especially during heat.

I could see the moment he’d made up his mind. His dragon-green eyes smouldered with sly intent, his lips rounded in a dark smile, and he lowered his mouth to my ear. “Then you know what to do,” he growled and paused to suckle the tingling, delicate lobe. “Ask me.”

I snarled in righteous anger at such daring…but then, in a moment of enlightenment, I suddenly understood what he was requiring of me.

My Shadowsinger had always come to me before this day as a supplicant, seeking my knowledge and advice, and recently my stories, as well. He had been made to bargain favours with me to acquire what he’d wanted, though. It was the way of the Fae, but in the doing, I had never treated him as an _equal._

Such a request was impossible, however, for we were not that. I was the father of his people, his Maker, an ancient, an ‘old god’, a thing from another world. Once I had even been King, a High Lord over much of the land, a ruler of tens of thousands of lives… I was made of and for Death’s design.

I was Ruin, personified.

 _But he is your mate,_ my shadows whispered in my ears, and for the first time in a long time, I listened to their counsel.

_My mate…_

Abruptly I was reminded of all the ways my lover and I were the same, why the magick chose us for each other: we sang to the Fiends and they obeyed, we listened to the earth and carved out its secrets, we rode the winds with our senses and felt their tremors. We were tortured survivors and ruthless soldiers and devious spies and covert lovers…and he was half of what remained of my soul.

Turning my head, I glanced up at him again. The glint of witchlight in his green-gold eyes reflected the intensity of a male waiting on the edge. Would his dream to be realised or crushed? There was vulnerability in the lowered brow, a fear of rejection in the tense jaw, doubt in the tilt of his mouth. In those small, but honest tells, I was witness to his true self for the first time, to the face he hid behind the placid mask of indifference. This was the Azriel who had been scorned and abused by his family, the frightened boy who desperately wanted to be loved and accepted.

We were more alike than I’d ever guessed.

“I am yours, Azriel, to the very end," I told him, speaking with Morrigan's TRUTH so there would never be any doubt. I was a mated male, and this is where my heart lay. "Will you let me claim you the same?”

A shift in his expression told me I’d asked the perfectly right question. With a triumphant smirk, he leaned down to kiss the corner of my lips, and he pulled out of me. I gasped at suddenly being empty of all that delicious warmth and strength.

“Turn over,” he instructed with a purely masculine arrogance in his tone.

I did as he wanted, desiring to complete our coupling while looking into his eyes, too.

“Open for me again.”

Prying my thighs apart, I made myself his for the taking once more.

“Hold on.”

His head came down as my arms encircled his shoulders and we kissed as he slid back inside me.

He made love to me for hours, mating me so thoroughly I was sweaty and achy, but more satisfied than I’d ever known. As I lay curled up on the bench alone after, as he stood to redress, I watched him through lazy, tired eyes and for the first time in a long time, I smiled for the pleasure of it.

“Yes,” he said, as he knelt by me and brushed damp hair off my temple, and I knew he was answering my question from before.

I reached out and traced his stubbly jaw. He badly needed a shave. “Will you come back soon to hear more of my story?”

He kissed the tips of my fingers. “Yes.”

As he left, my shadows followed his to the door. Once he was gone, my body shifted back into its correct form.

Strangely, I missed the way I’d felt as a female.

It was only as I closed my eyes that I sensed him—the Wraith hovered by my door. He’d obviously gone at some point, but he was back now. As I beckoned him forward, he came and hovered at my side, and I felt the cool brush of his ghostly fingers as he touched my hand.

Of all the creatures I had known from the time before, I trusted this one more than any other.

 _“This Illyrian, you love him?”_ he asked.

“Yes,” I sighed. “He’s my mate. Ironic, isn’t it?”

_“No more than falling into this world was for either of us.”_

That made me smile.

 _“Thank you,”_ he said.

“For what?”

_“For saving me.”_

He was referring to the Raksashi.

I reached out and took his hand in mine. I could feel him, although he wasn’t fully solid. That was Death’s only gift for being its sword: to be able to interact with the dead. And, after all, I was nearly one of the undead, in a sense. All Osedax were.

“Thank you for the same, Muninn.”

I let my gaze wander to the exit of my cell, to the dark hole that led upwards towards the light. On the other end of it, I felt Azriel open the main doors of the Prison and walk through them, back into the world of the living.

The wind carried the scent of a storm coming in behind him, driven from the west.

“If I had taken my life long ago, I would have missed out on knowing him," I said, "and on finding this chance for redemption.”

The Wraith stroked over my hair with gentle, soothing hands. _“Sleep,”_ he bade me in that soft, effeminate voice that had frequently lulled me into the arms of dreams. _“I’ll watch over you.”_

“You always do,” I mumbled and gave in to his coaxing.

**~.~.~**

My sleep was not restful.

I dreamed of bloodied wings and the screams of battle, of being buried deep inside Phaedra and knowing I’d bred her again, of Stryga and of her cinder-black roses, and of my elder brother hunting me, vowing he would someday see me turned to ash. I reached out my hand for someone to help, and Azriel took it. “Thank you for saving me,” I told him. When I looked up, he was gone, replaced by the Wraith, who smiled at me as if he knew something I didn’t. Next to him stood the Angel of Retribution, the one calling herself Amren. She said to me with fire in her eyes, _“We will burn together, you and I. We will save the world and eat its souls.”_

I awoke to the tolling of Death’s bell and knew…

The King of Hybern had assembled the Cauldron.

**.**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**TO BE CONTINUED…**

**~.~.~.~.~**

**.**


	10. That Which Haunts Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edited 26 April, 2018 - Revision 2.0
> 
> Tamlin's father and Rhysand's father are not named in the novel canon to up to "A Court of Wings and Ruin", nor is the reason for their rather severe enmity explained, so I went through some ancient mythological stories to find inspiration (copycatting Maas, who used a lot of mythological characters and locations for names of her characters/locations/species). Lo and behold: Atreus and Thyestes popped right out at me. They were two brothers who were once as close as could be, but as they grew up, they succumbed to the lust for power (they each wanted to be King of Olympia) and ended up betraying each other over and over again, becoming vicious enemies (they did some truly horrific things to each other over a series of years). I thought that might be a good head-canon tale for why Tamlin's father and Rhys' father hated each other so much. I will explain in future chapters what it was, exactly, that drove Atreus and Thyestes apart and why they both turned into horrible rulers later (both were vicious from the descriptions in novel canon), as that tale correlates with the Bone Carver's own problems with his siblings in this story.
> 
> Leonidas was the historical Spartan King who led the infamous last stand of the 300 Spartan warriors at the Battle of Thermopylae in ~480 BCE. I thought it a fitting tribute to use his name and reputation in this fic for a tertiary character of some importance to the narrative (in future chapters, particularly).
> 
> In Chapter 61 of ACOMAF, Feyre describes the Hybern castle. I used that as a reference for this chapter but embellished upon it to match the background history I envision for this story.
> 
> In Irish Mythology the Tuatha Dé Danann get their four magical treasures from four legendary cities: Gorias in the east; Finias, in the south; Murias in the west; and Falias in the north. I have borrowed these names for this fic's legendary locations.
> 
> Also, recall that in the battle with Hybern to come in ACOMAF, Cassian steps in front of a badly wounded Azriel and Morrigan (who is holding Az up) and gets his wings shredded. I am implying in this fic that Cassian did that not just because he loves his friends, but also because he owed the Bone Carver as part of this deal.
> 
> I hope you're enjoying this fic so far. Please leave me a review and let me know your thoughts!

* * *

**.**

**~.~.~.~**

_**"Once upon a time, in their reckless youth, the former High Lord of Spring, Thyestes, and the former High Lord of Night, Atreus, met and became fast friends.** _

_**For many years the two males were inseparable, pranking and vandalizing, indulging in their cups and cheating at cards, and forever engaged in friendly competition for female favours. They traveled, and dined, and made war together, and all was a merry mischief where they were concerned.** _

_**One day,** **using Atreus' royal blood to gain entry to The Prison** **,** **the two went to visit the ancient and powerful Bone Carver to ask for a vision of their futures.** _

_**They entered the monster's lair as brothers of the heart...and** _ **_left it as sworn enemies."_ **

**_~ from "The Carver's Legacy", excerpt by Helion, High Lord of the Day Court_ **

**~.~.~.~.~**

**.**

* * *

 

 

Hybern's King had the Cauldron.

My enemy's heir had reassembled the most powerful artefact the earth had ever known: the Mother's Light, the agent of the Great Cataclysm, the ruin of my kingdom...and of my very soul.

The World-Breaker was restored.

Death laughed at my panic and took one step closer.

 

* * *

 

The very next morning after my dream-vision, I forcibly shut Azriel out of my thoughts and returned to the task I'd begun months earlier: securing my legacy.

With great care, I sanded and carved the whale bones my mate had previously brought me, feeling the urgency to complete my task stepped up by the 'reawakening' of the Cauldron, far across the sea.

Using the diamond-hard hammer and chisel set I'd acquired through exchange with two foolish High Lords, friends of warring Courts who had come long ago seeking my magic, I worked diligently for days without rest to hew the bones into square tiles of the exact same width and length. When that was completed, each one of those shingles was meticulously engraved with exactly one magical rune whose angles and whorls were sculpted with an eye for perfection. The tiniest mistake—a nick in the wrong spot, a curve that was too narrow or too wide—and I was forced to start over from scratch, for there could be no margin for error in this undertaking.

Fortunately, the remains of the giant aquatic creature were plentiful, and I had other bones I'd amassed over the last few years as well, some from fellow prisoners, some from former visitors. My stock was, for the first time, sufficient for my task as long as I didn't make  _too_ many mistakes.

The lampblack I used to darken the etchings of my completed pieces, however, was a much smaller supply and therefore, every speck was precious. Obtaining the charcoal of gutted torches was easy enough, but the small bag I'd collected over the years of bone with particularly potent emotions tied to them, which I'd ground down into fine particles, that was a reserve I couldn't afford to squander. Fortunately, the dusted remains of the magically powerful Rakshasi had added to the pile.

Still, I had a roomful of tiles to soot and barely enough to go around, and so left that part off until after the carving was done.

It was grueling work, taking hours to accomplish even a single tile despite my well-honed skill at scrimshaw. I had managed to craft three dozen in a six-day time period. I added those to the group of one-hundred and fifty-two I'd already completed to date.

Since the night I'd first had the premonition of my impending death, I'd been hard at work on this particular, desperate project, knowing I'd need exactly three-hundred and thirty-three tiles in sum total for what I had in mind. At this rate, I calculated it would take me about another month of dedicated carving to finish the remaining one-hundred and forty-five shingles.

Would I finish it before the white fire came for me, or would my story be lost forever?

 

* * *

 

By the end of the fifth day, my head buzzed, my eyes ached, but I was still too consumed with carving to sleep. I was enthralled by the spells I worked, compelled by a demonic desperation to finish my task.

The Wraith watched me from a distance, hovering at my open door and silent as the dead. He didn't try to convince me to seek my resting slab or nag me to feed, for he had seen me many times over the millennia enter this same obsessive state and knew to keep back.

It was easy to get lost in the carving of Death's magic...and it was equally as dangerous to interfere.

 

* * *

 

On the seventh morning, with an ash-coated tongue and muscles that burned from being hunched over for so long, I stopped for a brief respite.

Desperate for a drink, I left my cell to travel the long, empty hallways of The Prison to its outer-most edge, where a well had been dug long ago. I lowered the rope and bucket down into the abyss and pulled up life-giving water from a flowing Artesian well that ran under the island. It was cold but refreshing.

When I had drunk my fill and bathed my body, I turned and headed back down into the bowels of the gaol to seek a safe rest.

With each pain-filled step through the ancient, subterranean fortress, I could sense the remaining creatures stirring in their cells. I felt their terror of me vibrating through the air and used that energy to temporarily raise my flagging life force. It wasn't bone. It wasn't blood. It  _was_  enough magick to get me back to my cell, however, to allow me to lay my head down upon my sleeping pallet and to curl a wing over to keep warm.

As I shut my eyes, though, all I could see were the red sands of my homeworld as they slid through my clenched fingers. Like a turned hourglass, they counted down the seconds remaining of my life.

Although time was different here in Prythian, I still felt every second of it slipping away.

 

* * *

 

I awoke sometime later that same day to the sound of The Prison's front doors opening.

Half-delirious from fevered exhaustion, I roused myself. Was it Azriel seeking my company once more? Just the thought of seeing my mate again gave me a jolt of energy. I flopped onto my side and clawed at the stone to rise to my knees. My limbs were weighted slugs, and my head was filled with wool, but I managed to stand just as the Wraith started rousing the other prisoners with a warning about our visitor's identity.

"The General!" he sang out, "The General's coming!"

Cassian, then, not Azriel.

I tried not to let my disappointment gnaw away at me. My mate hadn't visited in a week, but according to the whispering wind, I knew that he was busy on his next project: finding a way to break into Hybern's castle. It seemed his spies throughout the various Courts and Mortal lands had somehow discovered what I'd felt in my soul days ago: that the Cauldron had been reassembled and was active.

I wondered if his goal was to destroy it or to seize such an awesome weapon for his High Lord...

The shudder of fear by the other prisoners became a palpable tremor through the rock under my bare feet as Cassian strode through the corridors and headed towards my demesne at the bottom of the asylum. As one of the strongest Illyrian soldiers to have ever walked the earth, Cassian had also been assigned Warden of The Prison. He'd held the position for the last century, assuring no breach, even during the years of Amarantha's reign, when she'd attempted to find me so as to unleash me upon her foes.

As if the arrogant witch could have ever controlled me.

I scoffed at the thought.

Most of the prisoners here had never met Cassian, but they could  _feel_ his power as he moved past their doors now, each of them aware he could easily smash the stones around their heads and drown them in the rubble if he so chose. For a bastard, I had to admit the male had been well-bred...but more importantly, he had the talent and the stubborn will to wield the magick that was Prythian's gift to its children. It was that which made him a dangerous enemy and a capable Warden for this place.

He terrified everyone. Well, except me. I'd only faced two others in this life who instilled fear in my soul, and neither of them had originated in this world.

The familiar scent of leather, sweat, and the earth's rich soil was carried on a cold, morning breeze that rushed ahead of the Night Court's general. As he took the final turn and headed down the last stretch towards The Pit where I lived, I could hear his quickened breath, filled with a desperate rasp. He'd run here.

So this wasn't to be a social visit, but one of necessity.

I willed my doors opened just as my body shifted, and I sighed with exasperation as my form became a familiar, detested one. Of all the skins to wear...

Cassian sauntered in a moment later and upon recognizing my features, he stopped as if suddenly yanked backward by an invisible hand and all the blood drained from his face. I couldn't blame him, really. Coming face-to-face with the handsome, but haughty mien of Atreus, the former High Lord of Night, had probably not been what he'd been expecting this morning upon waking.

He snarled and began swearing.

"Change! Become someone else!"

On edge already, my mood foul as a result of not eating in days, I felt my patience snap. Rather than answer him, I simply stepped back into my shadows and let them engulf me. Then, I snuffed out the surrounding torches with a thought. The dim cavern was plunged into a stygian darkness the likes of which no outsider could hope to pierce without fire or magelight.

My visitor's sudden stillness and the quiver of fear I felt running through him had me smiling. For all his strength and power, the Night Court's greatest warrior was still afraid of me. "No need to be so rude, Illyrian," I chided with an amused tut. "You conjured this face, not me. Or had you forgotten how this works?"

"I... No, I wasn't thinking of that cocksucker when I walked in here!" he growled, defensive and cautious.

I hummed, doubting his contention.

"I wasn't!" he insisted.

"Perhaps not consciously, but your former High Lord clearly haunts you nonetheless."

Cassian snorted. "The fucker's long dead and his memory can't hurt anyone."

He turned his head this way and that, trying to track me through the darkness by zeroing in on my breath and body heat. What my guest failed to understand was that my Osedax heritage had evolved over thousands of years to a subterranean life, and my kind could adjust easily to differing levels of light and temperature within the dark, damp caves of a chthonic underworld. Furthermore, I had the shadowy Fiends to cover my scent and to diminish my life's aura to outside senses. Cassian would never find me if I did not wish it.

I ghosted around the periphery of the room, remaining out of reach, circling him as a predator waiting for the right opportunity to strike.

"Change," he demanded of me again, his voice that of the hardened commander of Night's forces. He was frustrated by his inability to find me.

I snickered at the slight panic my sensitive ears heard in his tone. "You'll have to make me," I taunted. "Else you'll have to stare at the face of the male you despise when you beg your indulgence from me. And won't  _that_  just sting, Illyrian."

The lion-like rumble of irritation that answered my challenge made me grin. Knowing I'd gotten under Cassian's skin as he had mine balanced the scales a bit.

"Why is it you're the only person on the planet who can irritate me this much?" he snarled.

I laughed, and though it sounded tired, it had enough bite to let my guest know how annoyed I was with him. He'd come to me for help, after all, and then had behaved rudely, and he still hadn't offered me any tribute. "I don't think that's quite true," I refuted, determined to teach this whelp a lesson in manners. "There's recently been a certain human female who seems quite capable of twisting you into knots, or so the wind tells me."

The muscles of his jaws tightened and he crossed his arms in a silent warning against provoking that subject. I pushed anyway.

"You suspect why that is, don't you, General?"

"Don't," he warned.

I was unimpressed by the threat. "Are you sure you wouldn't rather see your woman standing before you in all her tempting, temporary beauty, offering you a new life...even as she hurdles towards an uninspiring mortal death?"

Instant, hot rage ignited a single siphon on his arm bracer, peeling back a bit of the darkness. The dull, red glow throbbed like a heartbeat in the silent room.

I could feel the curse upon me struggle between Cassian's subconscious desires. My body attempted to change, but my visitor's will was absolute that I not do so. He was obviously terrified of what would happen should the torchlight come up again and he was to see the Archeron woman, the Cursebreaker's sister, standing before him instead. I could taste his fear of that possibility in the air, hear it in the quickening of his blood, see it upon his stricken expression.

Because, as those who were already tethered well-knew: wanting a mate who might not want you back was to die over and over again. It was ceaseless misery, a never-ending punishment.

 _"A soul divided will forever lament its brokenness._ _"_

Phaedra had understood that, too. With her last breath, she'd told me as much.

_"Your punishment, Kharon, has been mine as well."_

Better to face a hundred foes than one you loved whose heart was beyond your reach.

Cassian's wings shifted as he tucked them tighter into the curves of his body. "You don't go there," he cautioned me. "She's off-limits."

I sighed with resignation. Illyrians were so sensitive when it came to their mates. Very well, I'd simply have to taunt him about her another day. "Then concentrate on someone else," I instructed him, "or face the demonic High Lord who plagues your thoughts each time you encounter adversity."

I gave him several silent moments to do just that, but it seemed the memory of Atreus had sunk its hooks in deep and was too entrenched in his subconscious to banish. "Why do you let this male's memory torment you?" I asked, curious, moving around him as silent as a shadow. "Atreus was a lesser Lord than even his forebears, and as unworthy to rule the hearts of others as his younger brother, Keir Darkbringer."

I watched Cassian's throat bob, his eyes drop to the floor, his stubborn chin droop a fraction of an inch, and in that moment, I saw my once-beloved nephew, Leonidas, standing before me once more. Slightly shorter, stockier, but the resemblance was close enough to cause my breath to hitch.

I had my answer as well.

"You are no longer a helpless bastard child, and the surrogate 'father' who once chased you across cold, muddy fields and who beat you without mercy is long gone," I reminded him. "He cannot harm you, nor can he separate you ever again from your loved ones."

In the darkness, I watched the great Cassian flinch, but was not enough to curb my tongue. I'd played this same game with hundreds of others for thousands of years—for far longer than the Fae collectively had memory. Shadow-singing, the art of whispering uncomfortable truths from the darkness to alter the decisions and outcomes of others, came naturally to my kind and I ruthlessly exploited that skill now.

"He cannot raise his fist to you or your Rhysand ever again, nor can he continue to lust after the warrior-niece he could never have."

I watched his arms drop to his sides, his fists clench, heard the leather of his bracers creak as the muscles underneath strained and stretched their protective hold. Two more siphons flared to life at the mention of his precious Morrigan. What was it about that female that had males falling all over themselves to shield her? As if she needed their protection!

I strengthened the shadows around me as I glided around the perimeter of the cell, remaining just beyond Cassius' reach, and I spoke in sibilant tones into the very heart of his fears. "Usurper Atreus, who murdered his elder brother for the throne, and used his powers as  _daemati_  to wipe all memory of the incident. Tyrant Atreus, who terrorized his mate and children until they had run to the Illyrian camps to escape life at court."

Another siphon glowed as Cassius' iron will slipped a notch.

"Depraved Atreus, who encouraged the Morrigan to be beaten and marked a whore after you'd rid her of her inconvenient prize."

I heard Cassian's back teeth grind together and his wings shift as the muscles in his body tensed for violence. "You're not telling me anything I don't already know," he spat. "And I don't fear his memory."

"So you shouldn't, as he is now Death's whore to ride and you need never fear him again. And yet, here I stand in his skin, and I wonder why it is you don't imagine him a bloodied, grey-skinned corpse, but rather as he was in his prime, during the age of his greatness when he terrified you most?" I stepped up behind him, close enough to hiss in his ear, "Or could it be that rather than fear, there is a part of you, Illyrian warrior, that respects such strength and cold-blooded callousness? That...admires it?"

He whirled and flung a careless punch, but I was already beyond his grasp.

"Never!" he snarled. "Atreus was a psychotic fuck, and murdering him was the only thing worthwhile that little shit, Tamlin, ever did!"

Yes, on that much, we could agree.

Not that Spring's current King was any better than his dead sire, Thyestes, who was once oath-brother to Atreus. The former High Lord of Spring and the former High Lord of Night had been twins of the heart until their personal ambitions had revealed to them an ugly truth...

As it was with the fathers, so it had been with the sons.

"Are you sure about that?" I asked anyway, testing my visitor's character.

I knew Cassian was a male of honour, but I also knew he lived for the thrill of the chase and the battle. A creature of peace he would never be, for he sought the challenge and dared to burn to win it. He reminded me too much of Leonides at that same age.

Rather than physically react, as I'd expected he'd do again, he instead paused, and I could see him turning inward to give my query some serious thought. It made me think better of him than if he'd simply denied the accusation. "Yes," he finally said, relinquishing his battle stance. His magick calmed as he regained his control and the siphons upon his wrists and the one over his heart went out, plunging us back into darkness. "Atreus lived only for Atreus, for his own needs. Same for his murderer, Tamlin. Me? I serve the dream."

It was probably the most profound comment anyone had ever said to me, truly. I was taken aback that something so eloquent could come from the mouth of a soldier, much less  _this_  one. Perhaps he was Leonidas reincarnated. I'd met a handful of such individuals over my long years, worthy souls the Mother and the Cauldron had reshaped and rebirthed, given a second chance at life...

"So you claim." I passed in front of him, my gaze riveted upon his expression, seeking the truth. "But do you do so for the sake of  _your_ legacy, or for the prosperity of others?" I asked, curious as to his response. "You cannot say both."

"Why not?" he asked and crossing his arms again, he took up an arrogant stance and grinned like a fool, brash now that he had conquered his inner fear. Although he could not see in the pitch black surrounding us, I sensed he knew I was standing there in front of him, gauging his reaction. "Since when is doing the right thing not bettering the world for everyone else?"

He had me there.

"Clever," I conceded with a clucking of my tongue.

Cassian shrugged and his grin widened.

Yes, I was almost positive now that this arrogant male was Leonidas reborn. Only that whelp had ever dared such cheek with me. My foul temper dissolved, replaced with a grudging respect. "Very well." I knew he'd come here for answers, and his wit and wisdom had won them for him this time. Besides, I'd always been weak when it came to giving Illyrians what they wanted. "Ask your one question. I will answer."

I slowly brought the torches back to life one at a time, but I remained in the darkest corner, knowing that should Cassius look upon me now, he would be wounded all over again. Atreus had tortured him as a child, for he'd been the bastard of the Night Court's Supreme War General and a plebian—a no-name laundress in the castle, with whom he'd had an affair. That disgrace by one of his top advisers, a member of his inner cabinet, had reflected poorly on Atreus as a leader and he'd taken his anger for that disrespect out on the General's illegitimate son...and used the child as a bargaining chip to ensure the General's compliance in all future endeavours as well.

Cassian had borne the brunt of his father's dishonour his whole life, and all the horrors that had followed him from childhood into maturity could be laid squarely at Atreus' feet. The male didn't need to be reminded of such things, I decided, and it was for that reason I opted against being seen for the remainder of our discussion.

"I've been to Hybern's castle twice before, but only through the front door," he admitted. "How do I get in without being seen?" 

"You assume I know such things."

My 'guest' grunted, letting me know he thought me specious. "You know everything."

I didn't confirm, nor deny it. Better to let him draw his own conclusions on the matter.

The truth, in this case, was I _did_ know enough about Hybern's capital city, Finias, to offer Cassian advise as to how he might infiltrate the place, as it had once been my elder brother's home.

In the Second Age of the Fae, known as the Age of Iron—when the fairies set aside their stone tools for ones forged of iron, and the Seven Kingdoms were born and flourished—the Court of Mist, championed by my eldest sibling, had reigned for nearly ten-thousand years over that particular area of the world. Koschei's country, established along the western-most border of Parthia, known then also as 'the Great Continent', had been comprised primarily of Fae who had hailed from a single tribe who called themselves the  _'A_ _es Sídhe'_ _,_ whose ancestors had left their ancient forests to wield weapons and advance their magick at the side of my brother. His government had situated its municipal heart inside a hollowed-out mountain that stretched far into the sky, its utmost peak so high in the air that it was perpetually surrounded by a ring of clouds that, on sun-bright days, thinned out becoming a gleaming mist of glistening water droplets that reflected rainbows of colour.

Back then, the mountain had lorded over the western-most edge of the 'tamed' land, that area where it was still safe for 'civilized' Fae to walk. On its northern and eastern side, it overlooked a lush, green valley dotted with well-tended Fae farms, and on the southern and western border, its lonely shadow lay across a dark, ancient forest that had stretched to the horizon and which had served as a sanctuary for many species of Lesser Fae, less evolved Outsiders from other worlds who had fallen into Parthia during the end of the First Age, and an entire food chain of indigenous creatures.

Within the mountain, Koschei had built his capital city with great care and attention to detail.

Despite having derived from a savage land ourselves, he'd been a skillful landscape architect, particularly when it came to taming the 'wilde' and converting it to 'civil' use. He'd also been an arrogant brute, and he'd treated Nature no less cruelly than he had his lovers. In a phrase, he was 'freakishly controlled' by his own deep-seated fear of disorder and chaos; a result of surviving the raging unpredictability of our red and stormy home world, no doubt. He'd tolerated no defiance; not from people or things. In his mind, they simply  _would_  obey his will, and he'd ever done his utmost to prove that point: if he could not engineer or magick a thing to conform to his wishes for order, he'd culled, smashed it, and ground it under his heel.

Obedience or death, those were the only options when dealing with Koschei. 

In my opinion, my brother had always been something of a Bogge's backside, with an insolent, overly-inflated sense of self-importance and entitlement as the eldest. He'd been secretive as a shadow, too, always keeping his own council, acting in his own best interest first and foremost, and his temper had been even quicker to ignite and more fearsome than mine. His arrogant insistence upon order in everything and conformity from everyone, including myself and my sister—hence the reason neither of us lived with him, but formed our own kingdoms far away—had often created a rift between him and others, too. Despite his good looks, his females had always found him difficult to like beyond sexual congress. Unsurprisingly, even his mate had reacted as such to him; she'd stood on the opposite side of the War of Wings, in fact, refusing to acknowledge their bond.

All of these 'charming' characteristics were further reflected in the design of Koschei's greatest city, Finias.

I was honest enough to admit that of the three of us, my brother's engineering prowess had been unrivaled, and his capital had certainly reflected that skill. My kingdom had been constructed with a soldier's practical eye: function before beauty, whereas Stryga's had been just the opposite, coveting beauty above all else. Koschei's home had been sheer technological genius, melding an impressive display of magick with an artistic aesthetic _and_ the need for solid defense. He'd carved it out of the mountain at the edge of the world—a dormant volcano whose caldera had been blocked by a landslide of rubble. There was designed only one main entrance into and out of the city, that required visitors on foot to traverse a series of zigzagging ledges that climbed up the side of the mountain to reach. I could still so clearly recall within my mind's eye the gargantuan, white granite doors at the top of that path that led into the mountain. They had sparkled and gleamed in the sunlight like diamonds, and at night, they had magically glowed equally as bright. They'd lit up the main causeway, guaranteeing no army could have ever approached the city's main entrance without being seen well in advance. The doors, once shut, were impossible to open from the outside, and they'd been warded against magic, so no chance of bringing them down that way, either. 

I thought now as to the internal engineering of the city, which had discouraged any chance of attack as well. Assuming the city was still the same, Cassian and his friends would have a difficult time with any sort of attempt to reach the palace even if they managed to sneak through the main gates and any guards stationed there...

Past the inner sanctum, the mountain had been hollowed out, with the High Lord's palace taking up the entire back wall, stretching to the ceiling, and its only access a single bridge that spanned only eight males abreast. It would be impossible to approach the palace without being spotted and archers had lined the palace's edges at multiple points back during Koschei's day. The remainder of the city had been built _into_ the stone walls of the mountain in a circular pattern, spiraling downward thousands of feet. Homes and businesses, schools and places of worship, soldering apartments and places to stable animals, all accessed by a clever combination of ramps and well-engineered lifts which required proper paperwork if one wished to travel up and down between the levels.

The city hadn't just been built to withstand an assault, however, but had also been meant to serve as a bastion for civilization across the continent. To achieve that goal, Koschei had constructed small green spaces and gravity-fed water fountains at every level, mimicking the ideas of water collection from the crèches of our home world. 

That had been its weakness once upon a time, when I had lead my own party of infiltrators into the place to steal a piece of the Cauldron, too. Perhaps it would be again...

At the very bottom of the city, a giant pool of clean clear water had, at one time, gathered. It had been fed by a waterfall that had originated at the palace far above. The water had initially derived from a combination of captured droplet condensation, ice, and snow that fell upon the top peak of the mountain. Those elements dropped into vents dug into the rock, and were heated by magic. By the time they'd dribbled downwards into the city, they'd become streams of fresh water. Koschei's engineers had carved elaborate piping systems throughout the city to move that water around, redirecting the flow of a portion of it to the small park spaces and fountains found at each level of the city, and allowing the rest to run-off the sides of the palace. It had created an impressive cascading waterfall that fell thousands of feet into the pool below where it gathered, I remembered. The pool at the bottom of the city then ran through other pipes that were filtered and drained into the fields in the valley below the mountain, helping to water the farmer's crops and to provide a constant fresh water source for them to drink.

And there had been a door set there, for workers to come in and out whenever there were blockages to remove along the aqueducts.

But did it still exist?

As I'd been incarcerated soon after the Cataclysm, the same as my two siblings, I wasn't sure what the place looked like now. I knew the land under the mountain had dropped approximately thirty to fifty feet, plunging the valley and the forest and the farmer's fields under the ocean waves. I knew the cloud cover and mist had disappeared with the changed climate. However, I also knew the city still existed, as Malphas, my traitorous ex-Spy Master, had taken Finias and made it the capital of his newly formed 'Hybern Empire'. It was where the current King now sat on his Emerald and Bone Throne.

The question remained: was the doorway at the bottom of the city still accessible? 

That was something Cassian and his friends would have to discover on their own.

"There is a door at the bottom of the cliff, to the left of the main gates. It used to be the water engineer's access to the outside from the lower halls and was designed to blend into the rock to be inconspicuous. It may have sunk under the seas, though, so if you must traverse this route, you may be required to hold your breath and get your wings wet, Illyrian. However, if you are lucky, it remained above the waves. Assuming Hybern's current king has not yet discovered the entrance, that is your only other way into the city."

He nodded in thanks and turned to go.

"Not so fast," I told him. "There is still the matter of payment for my aide."

He paused, and the wariness was back, stiffening his shoulders.

"What do you want?"

I considered that question carefully before answering.

"When you go for the Cauldron, you will swear to protect the shadowsinger with your life."

He frowned, clearly taken aback by the request.

"How did you know we were going to steal-"

I barked a bitter laugh, reminding him to whom he was speaking.

"Ah," he said, understanding that all I had was time to listen to the gossip of the wind and the earth nowadays. Of course I knew what he and the others were planning. The Cauldron did as well. It was practically vibrating at the chance of meeting Feyre Cursebreaker again. I could only hope its excitement did not alert its newest master of the scheme as well.

"You will assure Azriel does not die on that forsaken island," I instructed him.

"Why him, specifically? Why not Rhys or Feyre? You took a shining to them both when they were here, or so I was told."

I clicked my tongue again at him, this time in censure. "You needn't be concerned with the 'why' only the 'how'. You will assure Night's Spy Master lives in whatever manner you must. Protect him with your life."

I chose that designation on purpose, knowing it would throw the male off, make him believe my interest in Azriel had merely to do with his spying and shadow capabilities. I watched Cassian turn my words over in his head, seeking the hidden agendas, but it seemed he was content with the path I'd led him down as he finally nodding in acquiescence, finding no reason not to protect his best friend in such a manner.

"I'd do it anyway," he said and followed the line of torches I magically lit before him to show him the way back out.

"Yes," I said as I heard him take the turns and head back towards the light, recalling Leonidas saying exactly the same thing once about me. "I know you will."


End file.
